


UnDays

by RurouniHime



Series: Day series [10]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Anal Sex, Arthur can do things on his own thank you, Arthur gets his hands on a rifle, Arthur has an apartment, Assassins & Hitmen, BAMF Arthur, Backstory, Blood, Bottom Eames, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Celebratory Sex, Clubbing, Confessions, Cooking, Cruise Ships, Developing Relationship, Domestic, Drunkenness, Eames has issues, Eames is a scary bastard, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fake Job, Faked character death, Fights, First Kiss, First Time, Getting to Know Each Other, Head Injury, Hiding, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Jealousy, Knives, Love, M/M, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Marriage Proposal, Miscommunication, POV Outsider, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Protective Arthur, Protective doesn't quite cover it, Psychotropic Drugs, Revenge, Sexual Tension, Shower Sex, Sleepovers, Smoking, Switching, Teamwork, Their Love Is So, There's always pining, Top Eames, Trust, Vacation, Violence, World Travel, five things fic, so much pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2017-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-21 07:17:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 50,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These fics belong in the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/18926">Day Series</a> universe. However, clearly not all events take place on anniversaries, and there are limitations to just how much I can develop the characters in the actual Day Series. Hence, I present the UnDays. (Please see Author's Notes for more information.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. With Teeth

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Nice Day For It](https://archiveofourown.org/works/394346) by [RurouniHime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime). 



> **These fics belong in the[Day Series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/18926) universe**. However, clearly not all events take place on anniversaries, and there are limitations to just how much I can develop the characters in the actual Day Series. I've been pondering other filler stuff, and as a result, Arthur and Eames have been rather excitedly informing me of other events in their lives: how they met, how they got together, how they proposed, what their impressions of each other were way back when, etc., etc. 
> 
> Thus, I present UnDays. It is a series of (mostly) stand-alone shorts that occur for Days!Arthur and Days!Eames but do not tie in to any wedding anniversary. **Though UnDays will be set up like a WIP (because I want to keep them all together), the stories will not be linked directly from one to the other in terms of plot, and they will jump around within the Day Series timeline.** I will be adding tags as I add stories, and putting up specific notes for each story posted so as not to confuse readers (for example, "This story takes place between Damages and In Repair, Parts 4 and 5 of The Day Series, and involves blah blah blah etc etc Stuff" or "This story takes place before Arthur and Eames met, blah blah etc Moar Stuffff", you get the idea). 
> 
> **ETA: Please see the very helpful[Day Series Chapter Rubric](http://archiveofourown.org/works/862369) for questions about the series timeline!**
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> ................
> 
> Thank you to snottygrrl and coffeejunkii for betaing and commenting in an extremely helpful manner. ^_^

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This particular fic, With Teeth, details not the first job they worked on together, but the first one that really had an impact on the way they related to one another. It takes place _way_ before the wedding, way before the actual relationship starts. And this is a very different Arthur and Eames from those after the wedding, I have found. Which is pretty exciting for me in terms of exploring these guys' personalities and how they changed each other. How they got to where they are. Also, it should be noted that Arthur and Eames really wanted an excuse to grind against each other. I blame Saito. I’m sure everything can be traced back to him somehow.

Arthur is especially good in a knife fight.

It’s a strange thing to think with the pulse of colored lights bursting across him and the beat grinding up through his innards. But there are similarities: bodies to wind around, hands skirting just within reach, some touching down, eyes fixed dark and intent on certain areas of Eames’ body. The aim is what’s different, the silver flash in this room not of a blade but of piercings and chains, studs in lower lips. Other places. The sinuous weave of hips is a different dance here, sometimes just as deadly.

Eames feels the clutch of fingers sliding low, meeting the unforgiving weave of his jeans, the drift of a thumb over the ink on his shoulder. A man sidles in and Eames turns into it, fixes hips in place just off center of his own and indulges momentarily. The man plants slender hands on Eames’ chest and blatantly feels his way down. Eames chuckles, kisses his jaw, then the back of his hand, and bows out of the dance with a suggestive smirk. The man’s fingers tighten briefly round his and Eames sees the breath he takes, the utter heat that fills his eyes and flares at delicate nostrils.

Eames turns further into the thump of the club.

When there are knives present, Arthur fights efficiently. The choreography of it is still burned into Eames’ eyelids in perfect tint. Three nights ago, Arthur slid out of the alley’s darkness, approaching from the side, the swift twist and duck beneath a thrust. The first of three attackers tried to slice into Arthur’s gut, but Arthur swiveled neatly, hooked a wrist with his fingers and cracked a joint until the knife dropped to the pavement. Eames avoided another blade, but by then Arthur’s dance partner was howling, by the next second, silent, and Arthur had insinuated himself between Eames and the man to his left, who was looking to sink his knife into the space between Eames’ ribs.

When it was done, Eames was still bleeding from fists, but not from blades, and Arthur was collecting cell phones and weapons, rolling prostrate forms into dark corners.

“You get it?” he asked, eyes intent on the Sim card he was snapping in half, the limbs he was zip-tying together.

Eames flashed a royal flush of lifted credit and social security cards, then wiped his bloodied eyebrow with one forearm. “Pick a card, darling.”

Arthur did, and now Eames is here, winding through sweat and shine and sex on a real world dance floor, other people’s arms twining round his waist from behind, appreciative eyes licking over every tattoo. He grins through harsh red and yellow, slips fingers low under waistbands, and keeps moving.

Some days, it’s fantastic to be outside the dream.

At the sharp heart of the floor, Eames finds him: Arthur’s trousers ride almost too low on his hips, baring the notches that continue a steep slide beneath dark leather. His shirt is a mere suggestion, ice white and hanging open to frame the cut of his abdominals, his chest and the dip of his throat where sweat gleams multicolored. His hair frames as well, alert eyes over familiar cheekbones and a dour mouth, but Arthur has added sheen beneath his eyes and it glitters fairylike as he moves. Eames can see the slide of masculine hands over Arthur’s hips, climbing his spine beneath the fall of his shirt, and Arthur’s not alone, no deal has been closed, but it’s going that way, it’s going, until Arthur looks to the side and spots Eames. Drops his eyes and flicks them back up, and Eames moves forward, pushes the other guy out of the way and sinks into his space without giving him a glance.

“Hey—” The guy goes silent, noting Eames’ ink, his build, and above all the dismissive turn of Arthur’s chin. He folds back into the crowd slowly, and then Eames looks, _then_ he smirks victory at a disappointed face, _then_ he tucks Arthur close and shuts the interloper out completely. Arthur sets his grip on the backside of Eames’ upper arm and angles into him. Slams that door shut for everyone else, too.

Arthur’s clearly a Renaissance man. The dream does not hold sway over his abilities as it does with so many of their ilk. Adaptation is key and Arthur of No Discernible Last Name has it, slinking as smoothly as a forger into another man’s skin and setting up shop. His body is a beat of coiled muscle against Eames, and they are making a space for themselves, admirers moving a bit, gaining room to look. The edge of Arthur’s shirt collar is slipping wide, baring more of his shoulder with every sweep of their hips, and Eames can feel the brush of their stomachs together, the only flesh touching between them as they angle shoulders outward, press hips close into the sway. Eames tongues his own upper lip, pulls from Arthur’s gaze as if it’s an effort, finds hooded gazes upon him. People try to slip behind and join their dance, and there, over by the bar, the pair of eyes they’ve been waiting for all night.

He moves his hand high under Arthur’s shirt then, a pointed drag over sweaty skin, and feels it when Arthur’s muscles tighten.

“Eames—” Arthur hisses, and Eames jerks him close, pressing hard with his thumb right at Arthur’s hip.

“Sell it, Arthur,” he growls. Noses up to Arthur’s ear with a thrust of his chin. “He’s watching.”

A shuddering instant— and Arthur sells it, so well that Eames’ breath hitches in his chest. If Eames didn’t know it was a ploy, he would consider the dark hallway down the back of the club, consider himself set for an evening provided he plays the rest of his cards right. Because Arthur’s motion grows even more lithe, more personal. What space there was between them diminishes. Arthur’s thighs tighten around one of Eames’, hugging close and humid, and he folds upward at the waist, presses their chests together, too, weaves unforgiving fingers through the spikes of Eames’ hair and exhales over his mouth and stares him in the eye.

Eames is fucking impressed. And Arthur’s just what the mark has ordered.

Their mark likes lean men, debatably young. Toned but not bulky, with tendons visible in their arms and slender necks. Arthur’s wrists are fine-boned, his hands wide and capable, his throat a trigonometric curve. His top lip is thin, his lower juts out, and his eyelashes are long enough to shadow, even in this light. He has a natural squint that always makes one feel like he’s being judged, rubbed over and deconstructed and all wrong. Or maybe, with a single added curl of that mouth, all right. Arthur’s body is wrapped and sleek, firm under Eames’ hands, slanted and angular and overflowing with motion. His expression mocks, his delivery is loose, his every thought contained, and damn _it,_ Eames would forge Arthur in an instant just to wrap his mind around him.

He hasn’t, yet. Always seems an odd sort of trespass for people he considers his… colleagues. Unless he’s been specifically asked to, of course, and that has happened. 

Memorable occasions. 

The mark is definitely interested. Probably in Eames as well, just on principle. Eames knows what he looks like, sheer power and confidence, an ugly thread of the thug bleeding in, and yet compact and lean, vulnerable in some ill-defined way. Eames can define it: it’s his mouth, the shape of his lips and the way he parts them around a breath. They drag the eye, they even drag Arthur’s eye, but then, Arthur’s so good at what he does.

Eames slides round again, flattens his hand to the damp small of Arthur’s back and hikes Arthur’s hips closer until thighs fit fully between legs and he can feel the hot pressure through Arthur’s trousers and his own ripped jeans. Arthur’s half hard, but then, so is Eames. Who wouldn’t be? Eames hooks a thumb over the waistline of Arthur’s trousers, tugs them a little lower and rolls his hips up with the next downbeat. Arthur follows with a finesse that belongs to shadows, slings one arm round Eames’s neck and hauls him in until they’re sharing breath again, lips parted and close together, eyes hooded, only just meeting.

Eames smiles, with teeth. Catches the mark’s eye over at the bar and runs a lazy, proprietary hand down the back of Arthur’s thigh. The mark’s eyes glitter.

Arthur’s gaze lifts and drops from his mouth, lifts and drops— and then his fingers tighten in the shortest hairs on Eames’ nape, and Arthur kisses him, openmouthed. Barely a kiss at all, more a burst of air, a sucking of sound. Eames lets himself react because he would, were he kissed like this; he presses Arthur in closer and thrusts his chin up to hone the angle. Hears the intake of air when Arthur reacts as well, and ravages him, and then pulls out, lingering and sweetly smooth as if he’s savoring. Just this side of tender. Arthur’s mouth is left red.

It’s that searching kind of kiss, though, the one that catalogues, takes info and ranks it, and for a second Eames’ heart thuds as he watches Arthur eyelids slide half-mast. As he watches Arthur assess. They’ve made a slow turn, given the mark their profiles when their mouths met, and now it is Arthur’s vantage point over Eames’ shoulder that keeps track.

The heat Arthur allows to bloom in his eyes is plain, and this time not for Eames.

“Take advantage,” Arthur orders, and Eames obeys.

This round he initiates, stakes the kiss firmly in his own territory and pulls Arthur tight against his front as if the touch of his mouth is meant for Arthur’s entire body all at once. He circles his hips tightly into place, palms over Arthur’s arse, rubs down and up, dips too far beneath clothing, and sure enough, Arthur clenches his hand at Eames’ nape hard enough to bruise and shoves him back.

Because what the mark loves, even more than slender, hooded-eyed almost-men, is to take those men away from other men.

Arthur steps away and the dancers on either side surge in, one aiming for Eames, two others reaching for Arthur. But Arthur has already turned, recaptured the mark’s gaze with a curious head tilt— almost coy. He evades those pawing at him, slaps a hand away, and walks from the seething mass of bodies toward the bar. Eames allows the new fit of hips against his front, another dancer behind him, someone’s groin hugging his arse— the too-jerky gyrations of a person desperate to please. He keeps his gaze locked fiercely on Arthur’s retreating form.

He spares one glare for the mark and is gratified at the smirk he receives in return.

Meanwhile Arthur takes a seat at the bar and doesn’t strike up conversation, but eyes the mark between one shot and the next. The first he takes conservatively. The second he throws back, baring his throat and the ripple-swallow, and that’s the moment the mark latches onto the bait.

The man behind Eames tucks a nose into the side of his neck and inhales like he wants to own him. Eames gets a grip on his hip and controls their dance, letting anger play over his face, but the mark has already hoisted that victory overhead, and Arthur is certainly not paying Eames any attention.

“Tough luck,” the twink plastered to Eames’ front says, craning round to look Arthur over. Eames winks at him, nips at the side of his mouth once, then thrusts the dance into the gutter, makes his partner’s grin sag wide, his shoulders slacken, his body shiver.

When Arthur and the mark leave the bar, Eames turns abruptly free of both dancers and follows. He grabs a toothpick from the little jar on the end of the bar and heads outside.

The street is full of half-clothed men, some more discreet but not many. There is no reason to notice as Eames trails Arthur and the mark: just another guy desperate for fresh air outside the club. The light is sodium-yellow, the air tinted with cigarette smoke, and the murmur of voices is a hum, punctuated by the occasional sputter of laughter. 

Arthur and the mark enter the swinging glass doors of the motel next door, a beat up place with flickering neon and busted lights out front. The mark must have a room already, because he guides Arthur up the stairs with a hand cupped possessively at his lower back, and it isn’t until Eames is nearing the doors himself that a second man detaches from where he’s lounging at the front desk and follows them up. His step is cool and sedate, and he’s wearing a passable blazer over suit pants. Eames knows a bodyguard when he sees one, but this one has a ragged edge, something weighted in his eyes that quickens Eames’ pace.

The upstairs hall is long, turning once at the end. Eames waits in the stairwell, watching until they reach the room in question. The mark lets Arthur in first, and Arthur turns a little to take in their hanger-on, eyes making a quick sweep before the door clicks shut.

Arthur is able, but the guard is big, muscular. Eames would have a difficult time in a fight with him. And there are two of them in that room, closing the door between Arthur and the outside world. Eames waits for it to close, then jogs silently down the hall and parks himself on one side of the frame, leaning nonchalant with a hand in his pocket, the other holding the toothpick between his teeth. 

He waits for five minutes.

A man comes down the hall, stripped to the hips and thin. Already kiss-bitten across his pale chest. Reddish hair and pretty eyes and long, capable-looking hands. Eames returns the leer, returns the fingers through the hair over his nape, but turns his face aside at the attempted kiss. Shakes his head, smiles without involving his eyes, and the man leaves with a rueful once-over. Eames leans back, juts his hips out and eyes the opposite wall. Inside the room he can hear movement. Voices. Low for now. 

Not their usual, outside the dream like this. Not Arthur’s usual, at least; Eames has done enough skirting between real and imagined forges to know his way around underbelly basements and the inconvenience of knife fights. Though obviously Arthur does too, as his handling of hand-to-hand combat shows.

“You should see Cobb’s new point,” spoken a year ago by the best chemist Eames had ever worked with as they came up out of a test dream. The woman had turned her head on the pillow, and Eames could have kissed that smile, might have kissed her all over, the month being what it was and his sense of life so erratic then. That had faded out, but the freedom in her smile never had, the anticipation in her pale green eyes.

“Any good?” Eames had asked, thinking of Cobb, who possessed frightening genius, who still looked elsewhere like he was offended when his skills were praised, whose wife silenced all thought whenever she entered a room. And this chemist’s eyes had gone startlingly wide. A little hunted.

“Work with him,” she’d said. Stone sober.

Eames thinks about getting down on his knees, picking the lock on the hotel room door. Certainly the grunt would notice. Arthur needs time. There are papers it might take a while to find, not in any dream safe, but actual bank statements, tax records. Getting physically close to the mark is key.

Someone’s voice rises, just a little. Eames eyes the bolt. One lock, hip height. The door is scuffed and dirty, the sounds from other rooms blisteringly apparent. Eames sticks the toothpick into his pocket, watching a pair stagger into the hall and collapse against the door right across from the stairwell, shoving clothing down, shoving hands low, finally shoving into the room and out of sight.

A bump from behind Eames. A curse. And—

“Eames,” Arthur’s voice, urgent. Eames wheels off the wall, kicks the door in at its weakest point, the latch. It flies into the wall. On the bed, Arthur is pinned on his back by the throat, grappling with the mark, and the other man is halfway to them. Eames lunges, grabs the bodyguard in mid-step, knocks the gun out of his hand with a blow to his wrist.

“You—” the man gets out before Eames forces an arm tight against his throat, hooks a leg around his knee, pulls him off balance. Shoves him into the wall and watches as oxygen deprivation takes its final, struggling toll. He narrows his eyes at the man’s accusing— fading— glare, then lets him down to the floor in a gentle slide.

On the bed, Arthur now kneels, his shirt gaping, the buttons of his trousers wrenched wide. The mark faces outward now, Arthur’s arm wrapped round his throat from behind, the other pressed tight against the vein in his neck, and the man’s eyes bulge. Hands scrabble at Arthur’s grip; one worms its way between Arthur’s arm and his own throat. Eames crosses the room and grabs the mark’s wrists, yanks them down firmly.

“You.” The same word as his counterpart, but this time delivered softly, brokenly. The mark’s eyes skitter over him in helpless recognition. Eames smiles with the lower half of his face. Shakes his head and feels the man wrench at his hold. Shushes him when the jerking grows frenzied. 

The tendons in Arthur’s forearms stand taut, and Eames runs his eyes over them, back up, sweeping the arc of collarbone he can see, the pale span of flesh arching up Arthur’s throat to his jaw line. He meets Arthur’s eyes just as the man goes limp, and watches as Arthur blinks.

There are marks on Arthur’s neck, right at the base. A thumb off center and the splay of fingers reddening just over his shoulder.

“They hurt you, darling?” A little singsong, because the room’s air is sweet and hot, and Arthur is only half in the light. Eames can see the gleam of sweat where the hair curls under Arthur’s ear, can feel his own sweat cooling his shoulders. Arthur’s eyes drift as slow as molasses.

“Weapons,” he says.

Eames lets go of the mark’s wrists, but squeezes hard first, wanting bruises on that thin skin when he wakes. He goes to the grunt, makes efficient work of his coat pockets and finds a second gun tucked at the small of his back. A knife in a wrist holster. The blade is weak; Eames snaps it under his shoe and tucks the metal part between mattress and bed frame. On the bed itself, Arthur shuffles on his knees, bending low over the mark like a predatory cat, hustling his silk shirt the rest of the way open— four buttons undone when Eames had entered the room— snicking belt and fly loose, sliding hands up and down over waist and sides and flanks. He comes up with a sheaf of papers, another small gun— and, just along the mark’s hip, a wire.

“Hsst!” He tosses it to Eames and scoots off the bed. Eames yanks the battery pack loose from the mic. Any second, the other end of that wire will arrive. Eames is surprised it hasn’t happened already. Arthur grabs his arm, levers him up from the floor and out into the grungy hallway.

They head away from the stairwell until Eames hooks a hand at Arthur’s elbow and kicks through the last door on the right. The room is empty and reeking of sex, the bedding tossed. Outside the window is a wrought iron stairway. Arthur scrambles down the fire escape, jumps on the final ladder and heaves his weight onto it repeatedly until it slides earthward with a screech. As soon as Eames touches down in the alley, they’re running.

** 

Their fallback point is just as shitty as the other room, but the streets are quiet, the rest of this motel asleep. No one is tailing them. Eames made double sure and Arthur triple, and now they take the hallway on soft steps and shut themselves in where they can catch their breath.

Arthur goes straight to the bed, but Eames stands still for a moment just inside the door, testing his balance. The room is all dull, dirty sepia through the blinds, and Eames is stuck back on that wire.

Not cops. Not Feds. Both would have been faster. The mark recording for his own sake, then? A personal client? The man has connections to sordid people, people who might not care too much about his life, but about a paper trail, about being _dream-hacked_ — 

Eames scrubs his face.

“Job’s off,” Arthur says. He whips out a phone, starts punching buttons.

“Quite.”

Arthur’s eyes flick his way once. He gives a muted huff, but nothing more.

Eames retrieves his bag from the lowest dresser drawer and pulls out a shirt. Dark blue, nondescript. Unnoticeable. Arthur’s small suitcase was beneath the bed, now on the mattress. Arthur rummages and takes out a Sig. Eames watches the rapid motion of his hands and feels suddenly exhausted. He sags back against the wall, gestures with his shirt. “How did you know he was bugged?”

Arthur glances briefly at Eames. He returns to his gun. “Felt it on him.”

“Mmm.”

Arthur doesn’t look at him again, but the back of his neck flushes. It spreads down over his shoulders and Eames tracks it without trying to hide. Arthur sees to his weapon before his clothing, of course he does.

Eames pictures Arthur kneeling on that bed again with his trousers open. “What happened?”

Arthur slows momentarily, then resumes. He reaches into the bag again, comes out with a clip. It hits Eames rather late that this whole time, Arthur has been unarmed. Eames, not so much: the right leg of his jeans conceals a knife easily. But Arthur… had nothing. By necessity.

“They figured me out. Decided to kill me.” Arthur pauses. “Didn’t know about you, though.” 

Eames pushes off the wall slowly, the last thing to break contact his right shoulder. Arthur’s back is an unblemished slope in the half-light, muscles moving beneath his skin as he reloads and checks the chamber, as he holds the weapon up into the glow from the windows. Eames’ fingers itch and his skin feels too cool now, on the razor edge of gooseflesh.

Arthur is Arthur. Ramrod straight in frame and frame of mind, though his actual sexuality has never been food for thought. When Eames admires, he doesn’t need reciprocation to do it. But Arthur, now, tonight… Something has shifted, some trigger set loose and ticking in Eames’ core. He remembers with searing clarity the length of Arthur’s body against his, the way each muscle shifted to keep the beat, the simple efficacy in Arthur’s touch. Above all, the _calm_ amidst that bitter, dangerous tang.

The heat not only in Arthur’s mouth against his, but beneath, in the kiss itself, the clench of fingers round the back of his arm.

There’s enough time for this, for what is spooling tighter in Eames’ gut. His nerves are alive, hot-edged, and he can hear it every time Arthur inhales. The bed is right there, and Eames can picture Arthur diagonal across it, the bag shoved to one side, the gun half under his hip. Only a moment, another fierce kiss, the hitching of pelvises together, knees sliding up and apart, a leg curling over the back of his thigh, the tangle of Arthur’s hair between his fingers— the tension would burst, coalesce and hunker down deep, and leave them panting into each other’s mouths, touching in all the ways they already had on the dance floor.

Arthur’s _hands._ God. 

Arthur’s eyes, the darkness in them sunk low, watching Eames’ face and breathing him and thrusting his hips in a juddery, tired roll against him one last time.

Eames lifts his hand, reaching for the slope of Arthur’s bare side.

It’s the briefest of tremors, but it runs in a ripple over Arthur’s shoulders. Seated deep, as from the center of his spine. Arthur stops moving, braces his arms on the edges of his suitcase and drops his head.

The desire to fuck Arthur crumbles flat in a hushed instant. Eames feels winded, and like the light is suddenly twice as bright. He stares at Arthur’s bowed frame and something gives a hot twist in the center of his chest.

As if Arthur doesn’t belong here. Is too young for this world. As if he strode forward too quickly and found himself in up to his neck before he could blink.

Only Arthur is no child. Arthur’s been to war, experienced battle, seen and smelled and breathed death. But Eames has to remind himself that this means so little. He has been to war, too. Seen and smelled and breathed, and shed his share of tears alone after, more than once, too battered to stop.

He tries his voice and it comes, a little hoarse. “Arthur. Are you alright?”

“What?” Arthur turns, eyes narrow and searching, his posture straight again. “Yes. I’m fine.”

It is almost convincing.

Eames smiles faintly. He wants to touch more than ever, but for different reasons. Lifts his hand an inch and drops it back again.

There are more bruises coming to the fore on Arthur’s neck, and there, when he turns around to look more closely at Eames, there under his chin, the lengthy smudge where the mark shoved his hand up beneath Arthur’s jaw and pressed inward, cutting off blood and breath.

“Oh.” It escapes Eames in a rush of air. He settles the tip of one finger just under the left side of Arthur’s jaw.

Every one of Arthur’s muscles freezes, even his breath stops. Eames can feel the cooling skin of Arthur’s chest against the heel of his palm. His fingertip tingles like it’s going numb.

Eames pulls away. Steps away. There is a tremor in his hands when he shakes out his shirt and pulls it over his head.

When he has set himself to rights, Arthur is facing away from him, a high-collared polo covering his torso, a hand smoothing the mess of his hair. Every inch of his body language repels, warns off. _Don’t get too close._ Arthur clears his throat and somehow the sound cracks through a barrier, spilling the room into the rest of the world. The space between them seems to widen, and Eames blinks.

“Time to go,” he says, soft. Arthur looks his way one last time and nods.

And Eames leaves.

Outside on street level, the air is cool and fresh. Eames pulls it deeply into his lungs as he walks, slings his bag over one shoulder and waits to feel right-footed again. 

~fin~


	2. Say the Word

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Say the Word jumps around in the Days timeline. It started out as a Five Things-style story and then promptly walked away with itself, though the basic format is still present. Certain sections take place before the marriage, certain sections after, but ALL of this happens after they’ve gotten together as a couple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Gawd. For a while I thought this should really be titled “Arthur and Eames Have All the Sex.” I don’t even feel right, warning people about that. *sniff* A true warning here would be for all the damn swearing.
> 
> Thank you to snottygrrl for the (again) invaluable beta read, and to coffeejunkii for being my sounding board!

(Arthur loves that Eames keeps a bar of chocolate in the fridge just so he can eat a square right before he kisses Arthur.)

**

The thing that devastates Eames about his lover: Everything. Every fucking thing about Arthur tears continuously at his insides. The only saving grace is that he’s grown accustomed to the feeling, being pulled apart and rebuilt in a constant loop. It’s as welcome as Arthur himself, in Eames’ sight, in his thoughts, in his bed. Certainly in his body— and Eames doesn’t have a history of making that exception for many people. Oh, he’s done it before Arthur. He doesn’t label himself any which way. But there are things he will do for Arthur in a sliver of an instant that he would never even consider for another person. It was almost frightening at first, one of the reasons Eames questioned the nature of his feelings for so damn long, but that one night, cramped together on a bunk while the sea rolled under them— a bloody cruise ship of all places!— he slacked off, and whether it was a good or bad thing, Arthur got inside in more ways than one. Eames skidded off a ledge and feels like he’s been falling ever since. 

Sometimes it’s an ache, the way he looks at Arthur and some pillar inside him crumbles flat all at once and he has to blink and inhale and take everything in again. As if he hasn’t bulled into Arthur’s space a thousand times, saturated his nose with Arthur’s scent, his skin with Arthur’s sweat, worked his fingers inside Arthur’s body until Arthur dug into his forearms hard enough that Eames bruised. Until Arthur jerked against him like he’d been spindled there, froze and shuddered and dropped every damn mask he had in a shocking avalanche, and then looked at Eames like Eames had scraped him to the bone on purpose. 

Eames has wiped blood from Arthur’s eyes and wrapped Arthur’s wounds in bandages, and stripped the skin right off his own heart so that Arthur could touch. 

The expressions Arthur wears sometimes… He acts like Eames hasn’t fallen apart completely in his arms, trembling in every limb, salt stinging his eyes, Arthur hard in him and pressed down atop him and relentless and rough and so fucking thorough, like he wrote the blueprints of Eames’ body using Eames’ blood and breath. Like Eames hasn’t come for Arthur because he could do absolutely nothing else, because Arthur was in trouble, because Arthur asked, because Arthur didn’t ask, because Arthur was atop him skin to skin, slick with sweat and shoved up inside him, canting his hips ruthlessly even further, demolishing him piece by piece. Because Eames’ rise is so fast and so sharp, because his voice is ravaged, more a sob than a cry, because Arthur never, ever stops touching him during sex, as if Eames’ body must be constantly re-branded into his fingers and over his tongue and most of all behind his eyes. 

The way Arthur looks at Eames as he makes love to him razes, and in bed, tangled in Eames’ limbs and pressing so viscerally it feels like he’s forced up against Eames’ soul itself, it’s Arthur at his least controlled, his most dangerous. There’s a word for it that people forget the true meaning of, a word they use far too lightly.

Eames uses it too lightly. He tells Arthur he loves him every day, after all. 

Arthur _loves_ him. With blood. With salt and sweat. With anger so vicious and desperation so immense and devotion so bottomless that he bashes Eames’ entire world to rubble when he treats him _right._

And Arthur, for all his faults and nitpicks and agendas and beliefs, does not treat Eames wrong.

“Missed you, god, Eames—” Arthur hisses against his ear, stretching down, hiking the back of Eames’ thigh higher, straining Eames’ muscles and thrusting in deep enough to scatter light behind his eyes. Eames clenches hard with his legs, rolls his hips up and in, starts wrenching it out of Arthur because he can, because Arthur crumples, bows his back and shakes and lets out this unrefined sound that is all guttural. If it were a word it would be the ugliest curse, and Eames can feel that, too. The couch cushion chafes his back, the angle is all wrong for his neck, but Arthur is _home,_ for fuck’s sake, three weeks on a job and then five before that, and Eames is way too tight for this, and he doesn’t give a shit. He wants Arthur on him, in him, all over him, would keep him here for days if he could, would fuck himself bruised and broken on Arthur’s body and mind and taste and, like this, here, just like this, oh, “oh god, just, more, come on, darling, darling, make me— Ar— _Arthur_ —”

For all of that, Arthur comes first, jerking into him so fiercely that Eames’s thighs burn. He cries out, digs furrows into Arthur’s freckled back, imagining himself carved open, shoved wide, more of Arthur in there than there is space, and it’s glorious, it’s, it’s so very “yes, god, ye… _es,_ my darling, ah—” And _there_ it is, stricken and messy and indecent, the things he’s uttering while he comes, embarrassing, coarse, perfection. It lasts for ages before he can hear anything but the heartbeat thudding through his ears, before the pressure at his temples recedes, before Arthur is sliding hands slickly up and down his sides and tonguing lewdly into his mouth, plying all his air away, and— and driving him through it, drawing it out because he knows Eames can come for a long while when he’s properly seen to, fuck’s sake, it _hurts,_ but Eames loves it, he loves the way Arthur’s face screws up, as if he’s being transported right out of this universe by the discomfort-bliss. But he’s not because the way he kisses Eames…

Eames has never been known like this. By anyone. And that is what devastates him, the way Arthur knows him.

**

Arthur loves how Eames says ‘sshhedule’ instead of schedule, and how he emphasizes the second syllable of ‘research’ instead of the first. Eames’ accent is the only thing in this world that Arthur can describe as delectable and not feel like he’s whipping a thesaurus.

**

The thing Arthur adores about his husband’s clothing: the lack thereof. But not for the obvious reasons. Yes, Eames has a, shall we say, ‘different’ style than Arthur tends to appreciate. But it’s _his_ style, and however he goes about selecting it, he wears it well.

Eames is a true chameleon. He’ll look good in any damn style if he really, truly wants to. Really truly wanting on Eames’ part involves research and strategy, careful assessment, a frightening understanding of another’s preference just from observing that person in his or her native habitat. 

Arthur gets that Eames likes to irritate him with his clothing. It’s Eames’ favorite intrigue, partly because Arthur knows about it, partly because he can pick it up whenever he wants to and let it go as quickly as the boredom swings in. Arthur has made a study of Eames, but Eames has made a career of studying everyone. Arthur is certainly no exception. In fact, he’d be hurt if he learned he was. So Eames chooses a certain shirt on certain days to get under Arthur’s skin. Before they were together, he was known to select clothing for entire jobs just so that Arthur would gnash his teeth quietly in the corner, because it affronted him. Not that Eames looked bad, but that anyone could look so _good_ in such combinations, particularly a man Arthur wanted to fuck blind and stupid but could not close that deal without screwing everything six ways to Sunday. 

But it’s when Eames puts Ferragamo on his feet or laces into Guess, when he zips into Joseph Abboud, when he slings on True Religion with the same lack of care as he tugs Mossimo up over his hips… That’s when Arthur can appreciate the fact that no one else truly knows Eames. Who he is. What he likes. Why he’s wearing what he’s wearing, and why they really should give a damn, because the man needs to be reckoned with. He’s dangerous and perceptive and far too good at slipping under every radar in existence. They all see what he wants them to see, and they judge, and they don’t question it. They stick him in a box and turn their backs, and they are damned lucky he’s not actually the sociopath he plays at sometimes, that all he does is snicker at them and file them safely into _their_ boxes when they are no longer looking.

On a Monday, Eames extricates himself from Arthur and gets out of bed. It’s been two hours awake, legs entangled with legs, arms slung tight to bare skin, the tang of sweat and flesh and sleep and cooling air. The last to part are their hands, fingers unlinking. Eames stretches both arms overhead, lifting up onto his toes with an audible pop. 

He sways there on the balls of his feet in the sunlight, then pads to the doorway.

Arthur rises onto his elbows. “You’re not going to put anything on.”

Eames looks down at himself, the arc of his spine serpentine in the light, and then eyes Arthur over his shoulder. “Don’t think I will.”

He leaves. Arthur can feel his smile growing, slipping out of his control. He flings the blanket back, grips the headboard and cracks his own spine. Lies there bared to the room, aware of every centimeter of his skin all at once. The ceiling is fluttery and white, reflecting water from somewhere outside.

They cook in the nude, sit at the breakfast table in the nude, eat eggs and English muffins in the nude. Arthur’s knee bounces steadily and Eames licks butter off the tip of a finger. They collapse onto the couch with tea and coffee, and then Eames remembers the paper.

“I dare you,” Arthur says, sipping from his mug.

Eames rockets up from the couch like a boy and is down the hall before Arthur realizes he really needs to witness this. The front door opens, loosing sunshine across the hardwood floor, and Eames trots out smirking, scoops the paper up from the stoop, and angles back inside. Arthur peers through the blinds and sees more than one person out there, and a dog. He laughs so hard he feels lightheaded. 

Back on the couch, Eames winks at him and opens the paper with a flourish. Clears his throat. Begins to read aloud about the Dow-Jones.

Arthur drowses against his side for a while, stretched on the cushions and muddled from the sun through the window. When he rouses, Eames is watching the Home and Garden Network, the dregs of his tea cold on the coffee table. 

Arthur lets his fingers drift over Eames’ leg, bumping across his kneecap and up the outer sweep of his thigh, and gets hard so slowly he barely realizes. Eames shuts off the TV and sprawls back, spreads wide with his arms across the top of the sofa and his knees open. His eyes follow the path of Arthur’s hands, and then, when Arthur slips off to kneel on the carpet, he follows down onto the floor, lying out across the thick fireplace rug.

Arthur traces the length of him, nuzzles his stomach, then frowns.

“You know what? I want to do this on the linoleum—”

“Simpler to clean, yeah,” Eames says, already sitting up. Arthur could freeze just like this, in Eames’ lap and twined together, his chest against Eames’, their thighs bumping, but—

Eames kisses him, holds him close at the small of his back. He is so fucking beautiful like this, each breath moving the muscles of his abdomen under Arthur’s hand.

They fuck on the floor in the kitchen, the backdoor open a crack and a pleasant breeze flowing over Arthur’s skin. He finds the slopes of Eames’ sides with his tongue, the jut of his collarbones with his teeth, the paler skin of his belly and the insides of his thighs with fingers and nose and everything Eames will allow before he pushes Arthur up, grunting, and flips over beneath him. Arthur hooks his hands at Eames’ hips and noses his spine and pushes into him, rolls slow and relentless until he comes inside Eames, then pulls out. Urges him over, sucks him down. Eames covers his eyes with one sweaty forearm. His hips stutter up from the floor and he groans long and wordless when he comes.

They fuck in the shower after, Arthur pressed face first to the tile this time with Eames’ mouth tight to him, his tongue deep, on his knees in the slowly draining tub, and when Arthur lurches around and slides down into his lap, Eames rubs himself off against Arthur’s groin and kisses him for a long while after.

They eat again. They sleep. They watch TV. Eventually, it gets dark and they take it all back to bed.

**

(Eames likes bittersweet chocolate, milk and semisweet. Never white, but that’s not real chocolate anyway. He has a bag of Ghirardelli’s Milk and Truffle squares in a pocket of whichever jacket he’s wearing, a bag in his bedside drawer, even one in the bathroom cabinet. Next to the toothpaste.

Dark cacao, 65%, 70%, 80%, where the chocolate itself is the joy and not the sugar… Those are Arthur’s flings on the side. He settles them under his tongue to cut the dryness of a red wine while entertaining clients. He savors them while researching, a chunk melting against the inside of his cheek while he pores over papers. He grabs them off the shelf by the handful in the grocery store while Eames makes revolted faces.

In the door of the fridge, a bar of 86% rests against the butter dish. It’s the only chocolate in residence.)

** 

Eames loves that his husband will sit up in bed early on a weekend morning and work through Sudoku, the really hard ones, and then the Saturday New York Times. In pen. Arthur is so bloody smart. He’s a little too smart for the world he lives in, actually, but the golden ticket is that he’s confident as well. Ergo, that world of his ends up knowing all about it. Arthur is more observant than he gives himself credit for (but of course, next to Eames’ brand of observance, that’s a tough way to come out on top). He aims cool, reserved eyes at everyone, categorizing, watching, because unthinking behavior is predictable, canonical. It can get the unwary in the vicinity killed. Arthur doesn’t have a lot of patience for stupidity, and it’s especially aggravating when he determines that something Eames has done falls into that category, but Arthur has a demonic gift for calculation that Eames will take over sycophantic tripe any day. 

One does not gain this insight into pure human habit without having been forced to flick aside a person’s individuality and measure worth according to what can be seen alone. Not felt, not intuited. Patterns. He makes use of all the information at hand, naturally— Arthur would never handicap himself— but in the end, it’s a visual tapestry instead of an emotional one. That kind of outlook stems from past pain. A betrayal that poisoned the waters a little too deeply. Arthur uses his eyes, his nose and his ears, physical senses for a quick and visceral understanding of his situation. With Arthur, intelligence will tell all, and in their profession, you have one chance to prove you are not a liability to him. You might have two.

Arthur keeps his brain as fit as the rest of him and his thoughts to himself. His allegiance is hard-won and as fiercely guarded as those to whom he commits. He shows his respect through action, his judgment through silence, and his appreciation through that near-dismayed contortion of his face, like you’ve stretched him out with what you’ve managed to do, pulled the containment loose and let him _really_ get a look at you when he didn’t want to.

Arthur pisses people off. He digs under their skin and forces them to show their underbellies. He needles their thoughts, flicks them off like gnats, sums up all their efforts in three words, makes them grind their teeth to powder and curse and spew and _fume,_ and they ask for him back ten times out of ten because he is the best, hands down, at unearthing the mines that riddle their surroundings, at systematically blowing them to bits. He is protective, possessive, an inferno when those who have earned his regard are in danger, and an utter masterpiece to behold. 

So on a weekend, Arthur props two pillows behind his shoulders, waits till Eames has fit himself close, one arm flung low across Arthur’s hips and his head resting on Arthur’s stomach. Arthur wears thrift store t-shirts to bed, so old the fabric is a centimeter away from dissolving beneath Eames’ fingers. Each twitch of Arthur’s arm soothes, the scritch of the pen and Arthur’s steady, steady breaths through his nose. Morning light flows through the windows, Eames can see it through his eyelids. And eventually, Arthur puts pen and puzzles aside and flattens his pillows down, wraps himself back around Eames in a tangle of skin and cotton. Sleeps again.

**

(Arthur makes subtle noises about the creamy flood of Ghirardelli’s Gourmet Milk Sea Salt for a month before bars of it begin appearing next to the butter. He says nothing else about it, and it’s a miniscule sacrifice so that they can both enjoy themselves.)

** 

The thing Eames hates about his husband: that Arthur will fuck him even when he’s furious with him.

**

The thing that devastates Arthur about his lover: The way Eames kisses him, touches him. There is ownership in it, the fact that he can make Arthur badly want to be owned, and that’s the opposite of normal. Eames kisses with his whole body, a trick Arthur finds very difficult to duplicate, something he’s beginning to think a person might be born with. Like curling your tongue into a little trough. Either you have it, or you don’t.

The thing is? Eames cannot lie in a kiss.

In that club ages ago, Arthur felt it and did not know what he was feeling, but once he did— Even when Eames acts aloof, his kisses scream out the falsehood. The first time Arthur realized what was really being said was in a bland and muggy motel room years after the job at that club. It startled him so much he jerked back and bit his own tongue, and Eames went out the door with flat, whitened lips. Arthur remembers the sure and empty knowledge that he’d never see Eames like that again. 

He did, though. Does. Because Eames can never help himself. He kisses Arthur like he needs to tell him something vital, and his lips are his only voice. Even more sobering, like the world will never give him another chance to impart the things he must say. He unfolds himself to Arthur through kiss after kiss, sliding past every barrier as he does it. It strikes deeper each time, as if Arthur’s heart is a chasm and there is always somewhere that the enormity of Eames has never touched before. Logically Arthur knows he cannot keep letting these things come to light like this, breathing their first breaths under Eames’ clever mouth and intuitive gaze, because they immediately reassemble themselves, a flash-bang of reformation, molding to the presence of Eames. 

Or maybe molding to fit perfectly the way Arthur feels about Eames. One day, Arthur will wake up and discover he has nothing left that is solely himself, that Eames has laid claim to every single inch of it.

He keeps waiting for that thought to terrify him.

Eames knows fifty different ways to kiss, and only half of those are on the mouth. Arthur chooses a different second favorite every day, but the one he loves best never changes, and is so very simple and shocking and unexpected, especially from Eames. 

The kiss Arthur loves most is also the most chaste. Eames first gave it to him days after Arthur had already been balls deep in him once, after Arthur already knew the detail in the arcs of Eames hips and the shadows under his ribs, after Arthur had slept with his front to Eames’ back, a leg thrown over Eames’ sweaty frame and his own hand pressed firm against a rising and falling chest. Eames gave it to Arthur after the cruise ship, after the sea and the slow slide into uncertainty, just when Arthur was thinking he’d thrown down poorly, he’d rolled his dice and he’d lost utterly, they weren’t the same, nothing was fucking the same now, and when Eames turned around aimlessly in yet another hotel room, dragged a hand through his hair and yanked Arthur in, Arthur was expecting pain, speed, proof that this brand new thing was thrashing out its death throes.

That time, Arthur remembers. Two years ago. And also the last time Eames did it, not even a week gone: Arthur was slack and dull, broken-fleshed while they pumped blood into him, and Eames had leaned over and kept him awake with the same affectionate kiss that Arthur would always be learning how to return.

Now, Eames lingers on his lower lip, a soft nip, a gentler suckle. Eames lifts his chin, noses close. Arthur’s mouth opens like it always does, but Eames remains on the edges, a flicker of tongue just where Arthur’s lips part, and an exploratory nibble just in the center, as if Eames has anything left at all to discover about Arthur’s mouth.

Arthur is naked, legs tight on either side of Eames’ thigh and pressed fast against him at every juncture that counts. A costly condo bed is at the backs of his knees. Eames’ bare body is a wall of heat and muscle, one hand each cradled round Arthur’s nape and hip, and Arthur feels like there are doors still unopened, things he can still offer Eames, all because of the way Eames is touching their lips together like they’ve never, ever kissed before.

He’s going to ask Eames to marry him. He knows it already, and that part does terrify, the fact that it’s a foregone conclusion. It’s rolling up on him like a cracking of the earth, the fault line rising in his sight and rushing closer.

How Eames ends up answering will almost be beside the point. Arthur knows his own fate is sealed. His heart has been locked down for months, bound so tightly to Eames’ that parts have melted together, and if Arthur ever has to wrench away, it will all come back incomplete.

They could be done by now. They could be on round two, or out and about, the rush of neon lights and throbbing bass, faceless people except for the one they eventually need to find. Instead, Eames takes his time on Arthur’s _mouth,_ for god’s sake, like he’s not about to fuck Arthur weak, like the sex they are about to have will not split fissures through every single fortification this kiss leaves behind.

It devastates him that Eames can love him so hard— so gutted and skinned, so brutally that he’d kill for Arthur and then die for him in the next breath— and still kiss him like this.

**

(Eames knows Arthur changed his chocolate preference for him.) 

**

He hates that time when Arthur left him—

_don’t you do this, Arthur, don’t you fucking do this_

—when Eames had already given over his heart, and it had left him crumbling because it was bloody useless. After thirty-three years in his company, it had no idea what was good for it. Arthur slammed the front door, but a day later he was back, pushing through that same door with a violence Eames had rarely seen, even on a job gone rotten, but he’d felt it, he always _feels_ it now around Arthur. Arthur had grabbed hold of him like he thought he was imagining him, dreaming him, maybe. Eames can’t remember much about that sex, except that he shoved Arthur down on the bed and tried to make him understand just what he wasn’t allowed to _do_ to Eames anymore. Arthur did not get to screw him like he did, push up into him and wrench everything out of order and reorganize it to his own liking, mark him dark and obvious and then walk the hell out of his life— And he ended up unable to breathe instead, sagging against Arthur’s neck while Arthur shushed him and shook his head at the ceiling like he’d done something horrendously unforgiveable. And the whole thing was synonymous with taking in a huge, ragged gasp of air—

And letting it out.

“God, I’m.” Arthur’s face went pale as chalk. He covered it with a shaking hand. “Eames. I’m.”

Eames yanked him close and forced their mouths together again. Kissed him until the words went quiet.

And then he fucked Arthur again until Arthur was sunk deep against the mattress, everything about him heavy and loose as they clasped at each other’s hands in slow, restless twitches, and Arthur breathed thickly for a long time even after he dropped off to sleep. As if he’d been running since the day before and had never stopped.

For a week, Arthur acted a little bit broken. He’d reach for Eames and stop short, then reach again and grab hold, like he was damn well going to do it even if Eames pushed him off. He’d let go of Eames and flatten his palm against his thigh. As if he’d… _done_ something. Killed someone, or sold Eames out.

**

(Arthur doesn’t tell anybody about Manitoba, when Mal was still alive, extremely pregnant and bundled up like the Michelin man against the cold, craving saffron and pumpkin seeds. It was chilly in the mornings, but the ninth circle of hell at night, and Arthur spent a week figuring out how to brew the perfect cup of English tea.

It’s not as hard as it sounds— all about the order of ingredients going into the cup— but then, Arthur is good at things like detail and patience. As far as Eames is concerned, Arthur’s always had this tea-brewing ability, one of the many things he just Knows How To Do. The upward jolt of Eames’ eyebrows when he took that very first sip, the slight straightening of his spine and the way the chair spun lazily as his weight shifted, sucked away some of Arthur’s irritation at the fact that he’d done this like some intoxicated teenager when Eames was nowhere near a sure thing.)

** 

Eames loves how Arthur sleeps.

Eames has always preferred to sleep naked, even as a teenager. The corps was a fucking nightmare: all crammed into one room and forced into subservience in everything from eating habits to clothing selection. Of course, as nightmares went in the corps, it was much better than most.

Eames likes the feeling of sheets against his skin, any sheets, no matter the thread count. He savors the slide to cooler expanses in the middle of the night, loves pressing his chest and hips down into it, feeling that thin field of his body heat wavering around him like candle flame. The way the material slips across his hip when he turns over, the slightest friction in the early morning when he is most in need of that last little nudge. He feels wrong when he wakes up having fallen asleep with his pants on. Like being cinched high up around the thighs or overheated by socks on a summer’s morning.

These days he finds himself in boxers or sweats, a vest four nights out of five.

At first, Eames thought Arthur a kindred spirit. But Arthur is an equal opportunity sleeper. He has little preference for himself and none for others, enjoys it when Eames sleeps in the nude because sex _during_ sleep… god almighty. Eames has come awake more than once in the midst of the most glorious orgasm, tight to Arthur, inside him, even, if they were particularly thorough the night before. Sometimes Eames wonders about his body, fears it’s not really as picky as all that, but in the light of day, he thinks he’d know it instinctively if it weren’t Arthur. 

He’d fucking know, and it would never, ever happen.

In the mornings, Arthur ends up draped around Eames, his front snugged close along Eames’ back. Some nights his breath drifts across Eames’ nape; others, they face each other. Arthur’s cheek tucks into the arc of Eames’ throat and Eames can feel the overwhelming heat of all his skin right up until he falls asleep. Some mornings, Eames finds himself molded to the curve of Arthur’s spine, knees hiked up so that Arthur is curled almost into himself, and either way, it’s bloody addictive because Arthur—

When he’s asleep, Arthur’s body gets away from him.

It’s all about the one hand, the hand on the side facing upward from the mattress. The first time it happened, Eames lifted his head and stared for a good minute until his neck cricked and he sank back to the pillows, feeling hampered, not by Arthur, but by the pants he was still wearing. 

The waistband of which was firmly gripped in Arthur’s hand.

If Arthur is behind him, he hooks a thumb over the elastic and curls his fingers around its width, like he’s holding the handle of his briefcase. If Arthur is the little spoon, it’s the bottom hem of Eames’ shorts or shirt, clasped without force, Arthur’s elbow angled back across Eames’ side.

It took Eames three consecutive awakenings like this to go out and purchase a ten-pack of cheap cotton boxers, to start tossing a pair of ratty sweats into his suitcase for the jobs up north. It still surprises him some mornings to wake up constricted by cloth, but mostly he’s gotten used to it.

**

(Eames is beyond charmed that Arthur learned how to make tea specifically for him.)

**

Arthur exalts in the fact that his lover has muscle. 

God, but he’s shallow. Mus _cle._ Eames fucking hides his strength, can’t tell the damned truth about anything, it seems, but Arthur knew almost from the very beginning because Eames came at him through the blistering lights of a club bare-chested, jeans sunk low on his hips and way too tight for his thighs, and if only they hadn’t been working together, if only there hadn’t been ties to cultivate, professional relationships to safeguard. 

Eames is built just enough. Not overly outfitted, so to speak; Arthur is no fan of the steroidal body. And there is no sense in that sort of thing in dreamshare anyway, where true muscle does about as much as a real gun. No, that was how Arthur knew Eames was a different kind of criminal, one that straddled boundaries, dipped his (clearly) slick hands into multiple pots. Refused to limit himself.

Made himself a liability, and intriguing, and absolutely untrustworthy all from day one.

Arthur remembers very precisely vowing never to put himself solely in Eames’ hands. Always have a back-up plan. Never be afraid to flip and toss Eames into the pit if— when— necessary. His own safety was much more important than Eames’ wellbeing. 

He’s not sure when he started trusting Eames, but he knows when he stopped distrusting him.

Eames can and has picked him up. Hoisted him up his front and snugged Arthur’s legs around his waist. Walked him into the bedroom. Staggered them both up against a wall and held him there like it was nothing. But before all of that, before the sex, Eames dead-lifted him and carried him out of a bathroom in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, Arthur with his arms slung limp around Eames’ shoulders, missing fingernails, fighting against busted ribs for every breath, and even then, Arthur knows that he should have felt heavier, but Eames raised him out of that chair like he was a child, and when Arthur wouldn’t shut up (to shut up was to pass out), _di’n’t, I di… di’n’t…_ Eames just murmured, _I know it, darling._

Arthur fell a lot further that day than he’d ever planned, toppled and dropped out of reach, and then spent months trying to scrabble his way back up before he could even think about just sitting back and accepting it.

He leans so heavily against Eames these days, and Eames doesn’t even know it. He’s strong enough not to notice, but the truth is, Arthur throws himself on Eames whenever he can get away with it, in the most banal way he knows how: Arthur likes to be picked up during sex. 

He likes to be moved around, flipped over, bullied against headboards and across mattresses, pressed up against doors and walls and hoisted onto countertops. It’s not that he wants to feel weaker than his partner. It’s that he knows he’s strong himself, and if Eames is stronger than him, then Arthur is… 

Well. It’s idiotic to say ‘safe’. Eames is anything but _safe._

‘Taken care of’, maybe. The thing is, for all that muscle, Eames is surprisingly reticent about using it. And he could, damn it. Eames could toss people around like candy if he ever decided to do so. It’s always a treat to watch someone else realize it, that they had no idea about him. He doesn’t act like he has muscle until he’s plucking Arthur up and laying him flat out on the couch, devouring his mouth, getting his hands under Arthur’s thighs and hauling him close right across the cushions. Every naked curve of Eames’ body is accented by light, there are arcs of flesh just covered by tattoos, sparse hair and soft hair and coarse hair, and every inch of him so very, very _male._ Arthur has to remind himself again and again that he knows this already, because looking at Eames in the daylight, surrounded by others, with his hands stuffed in the pockets of loose clothing— he forgets. He forgets.

Like pain. Intuitively, he remembers. But it’s a punch to his lungs when Eames reaches back over his head and pulls his shirt off, drops it to the side and bares all that sheer power. 

In that grungy bathroom, Eames shimmied his twill shirt off and tied it tight around the knife wound in Arthur’s thigh, leaving a black undershirt that showed the tips of the tattoo flowing over his shoulder. Even in the state he was in, Arthur had looked, for himself, a dull relief at last.

Think what you like: Arthur is no size queen. He likes a built guy, but it’s not actually the muscle that does it. Eames could be wiry and tough, thin as a post. It’s the fact that Eames uses his strength _for_ Arthur. To get around him, over him, under him. Between him and whatever else. Even, when needed, to force his way through the substantial barricades straight to Arthur’s center. 

So Arthur does end up craving the look, like a drug he’s grown used to. He’s so superficial. He loves the bulge and the ripple, the thickness and the weight. He loves that his lover can lift him (hold him), no trouble, no questions asked.

**

(Arthur is damned grateful for Eames’ boxers because he knows he could well be without this in the mornings, waking with his fingers curled around nothing. 

He thinks his subconscious might be an especially possessive fucker these days. He knows for a fact that he never did this before he started sleeping with Eames.)

**

The thing Eames grieves over where his husband is concerned: Arthur has gaping holes in his armory. 

There are not many of them, god knows. Eames is probably the biggest, but he is also the least dangerous chink in the wall. Putting Eames in danger, while the most obvious choice for Arthur’s enemies, is the surest way to get yourself killed. It may not happen right away, but it will happen, if the threat, the injury, is grave enough. Arthur is a hunter and hunters have lethal reserves of patience. Arthur is the type to stalk the boundary systematically, eliminate all routes of escape, thread the web and slowly, tightly draw it closed. He sizes you up, then he chops you down. Whatever happens after that depends on you. 

Eames likes being sized up and chopped down. It’s like a seal stamped into his skin: he knows unequivocally that he has passed muster. _That_ is when Arthur became his, not the first time Eames lay back on that bunk, spread his legs and let him in, not when Arthur slid a ring over his finger and offered his own hand. Not the first time they ever kissed.

It was long before all that, when Arthur first broke him down and looked him over, and then decided it was acceptable to stand guard should Eames ever need time to build himself back up.

No, the worst danger to Arthur is the danger he brings on himself, and then, oh, he is _exposed._ As the bearer of the weapons, the maintainer of the shield, Arthur is the only one who can slip through the cracks once it’s all in place, and the damage he is capable of inflicting on himself is alarming. Arthur’s sense of duty can be a hole in that it telescopes the spotlight on precisely what he’s devoted to, leaving everything else in the darkest of shadows. 

Arthur has only one soft spot, an individual to whom he gave the benefit of the doubt before sizing up or chopping down, and that was Ariadne. And that was because of Arthur’s only blind spot: the man who vouched for Ariadne, who found her and ushered her into their warped little lives.

Arthur gave up his home, forfeited his family, went around the world twice and died again and again and again out of a sense of duty. A sense of what was owed. At the bottom of it all, if the stakes are… not high enough but _close_ enough, Arthur has no idea when to quit.

Eames grieves because Arthur will, without a second thought, run himself barefoot and bloody for a soul that he loves.

**

The thing Arthur hates about his husband: that Eames will sometimes look at him like Arthur has stabbed him so deeply Arthur can feel the blood running over the floorboards beneath their feet. And yet he cannot figure out when he struck the blow, or with what. He hates that there are times Eames will not have sex with him, will not even touch him. That Eames will not _talk,_ will not _tell him,_ and that it’s right after this occurs that Eames looks at him in this way.

**

He hates when Eames leaves him, says things like “in and out forge in Aswan” and “a little favor I’d like to be rid of” and “Sam’s in a bit of warm water”. Comes home two weeks later and slings his bag on the floor, crawls into bed, makes drowsy love to Arthur, and Arthur gets to find out for himself that the rest of the Aswan team had their fingernails jammed full of metal shavings by the mark’s retainers, that the favor landed Eames at the feet of a Triad enforcer, that Sam was actually well up to his ears in it. That Sam died from it, whoever Sam is.

Was.

Eames, who still is, by the skin of his crooked teeth.

“Followed you. Asshole.” To Tbilisi, where Arthur broke down the door and found the body of a substandard point man in a mess of blood, head full of holes. Where a chemist rolled over on his team for the blue book price of a Firebird and was slaughtered anyway. Where even the mafia turned the other cheek for these people, held up their hands and said they weren’t getting into the middle of it. 

And Eames sets his fork down carefully on the tabletop in a five star Italian restaurant, and demands of Arthur, “How dare you.”

How dare he? How dare Eames, with his tight lips and swift fingers, with his backlog of enemies a mile long and his deflections as easy as ‘good morning’. Eames can handle _all_ of it on his own, doesn’t need to _burden_ anyone else, flat out lies while he fucks Arthur and gets on planes and dances himself right into death’s palm and doesn’t say a word.

To the outward eye, it could look very bad. But Eames is no snitch, no turncoat. He’s just faster, cleverer, less emotional than most. He understands signs, he’s a master of getting the hell out of Dodge. He knows very well when to cut ties when something gets too heavy, and that’s what scares Arthur the most. 

There are times when Arthur feels very, very heavy.

“That was between me and Vargas,” Eames snaps. He throws down his napkin and gets up. Points at Arthur. “You are not involved.”

He leaves. Again.

Arthur has taken out more people for sneaking up on Eames— literally and figuratively— than he has for anyone else in this world, even Dom. He’s a trained fighter. He can shoot circles around Eames. He understands the pandemonium of long-term grudges. He’s damned terrified of a few of the people Eames has involved himself with in the past but that doesn’t mean he can’t grab hold of them and take them the fuck down like the professional he is.

He hates that Eames will not ask for help when he fucking needs it. 

**

The thing Eames adores about Arthur’s clothing: Arthur will pull on briefs in the half light, open drawers silently and rifle through until he finds trousers. He’ll tug them up over his hips and walk to the closet without zipping them, throw on a button down with barely a clink of hangers, and then go straight to the bathroom and squeeze toothpaste onto his toothbrush. He’ll stand over at the window half-dressed, watching the sun lift up over the tops of houses. His fly gapes open, revealing the vee of his pants, and his shirt frames the length of his chest in creamy white. He brushes his teeth with his toes digging into the carpet, weight on his left leg. Sometimes he’ll clip suspenders on, put pomade in his hair and get it mostly in order, and then he’ll go out of the room, bring back a mug of coffee and sip it at the window with his fringe hanging in his face, curling at his temples. When that happens, the collar of his shirt is not straight and the slope of his nape is long and smooth under the shadow of his hair, still damp from his shower. 

This feels very intimate, Arthur unclothed in this fashion, not for sex. Arthur gets unclothed for sex all the time but this, this is something else. There is a current to it that is not about orgasms or pleasure, far away from the thrust and give of their two bodies. Eames lies as still as he can and watches, lazy and enthralled.

On a rolling island in the middle of a cottage kitchen— perfect for a two man job, filled by tourists in two weeks but for now, gloriously empty— Arthur got unclothed for Eames, let Eames haul him up onto the block and fuck him fast and rough, skin flushed from the humid air, and the two of them still finding their way around each other, whether they were allowed to do this or if some line should be drawn between what they had together and what they did for a living. In the end, or before the end, really, Arthur stopped it, pulled off and got dressed again. Made them do their damned job instead, and Eames said nothing to him for two days until Arthur exploded at him and got stabbed in the gut in a dream, and Eames fucking shot the mark in the head well before the kick.

They didn’t get paid for that job. Eames ceased caring when Arthur got unclothed for him again in a dingy train compartment halfway between Vilnius and Gdansk. Despite their surroundings, it was slow and far too heartfelt. Eames came away from it shaking under the strange electric lighting, itchy where his bare knee touched the seat and glad of Arthur’s arms wrapped around his ribs, holding him up.

They don’t have rules anymore. Rules are clearly more distracting than sex.

Arthur’s personal rules include looking as put together on the outside as he is on the inside. The picture Arthur cultivates possesses a rare reserve, a poise Eames covets fiercely. The way Arthur walks, for god’s sake, _walks,_ embodies all the natural attributes Eames never managed to find in himself. In his forges, certainly. But one can only masquerade for so long before the inner self rebels, and Eames’ inner self is an ocean’s choppy roller to Arthur’s glass-smooth lake. If Arthur were to wear nothing at all, he would still be as refined as the clothing he half dons in the morning light of their bedroom, and there, costly cloth side by side with naked skin— posh meets primal— all sides of Arthur come out at once, bathed in a climbing coral glow that blurs the lines between one persona and the other. It’s above all a show of trust, one that Arthur may not even be aware he’s making. 

Arthur squints when the light reaches his eyes and lifts his coffee cup to his lips. The very first sound he makes is the soft, untidy slurp of too-hot liquid. Eames wants to kiss his mouth.

**

(Arthur despairs of the fact that his husband still will not give Alexander Saffold, point man on the rise, more than a raised eyebrow for a job expertly done, even though that’s mostly Arthur’s fault to begin with.)

**

The thing Arthur grieves over where his lover is concerned: Eames is under the impression he doesn’t want things for himself. Arthur can’t figure out the discrepancy, the distance between rolling with the punches— not attaching oneself to things— and, well, _not attaching oneself to things._

Eames does not have a detached personality. He is a hoarder, a stasher of memories. He has to be, has to remember things pristinely or he’s liable to get himself shot. He absorbs like a sponge and seeks experiences out specifically in order to drink them in, suck deeply and hold it until he must release. What he acquires in his head, he caches forever, and guards as fervently as breath. 

Anyone good at dreamshare has the ability, adopted or innate, to pick up and go, to slough ballast like dead skin. The secret is placing the home securely in the self. Ergo, physical things become baggage, easily shed. Arthur can remember a mug he had to leave in Albany, white ceramic woven with silver. It was a leftover from a college roommate moving out of the country, a mug Arthur used more than its owner did. He couldn’t put it in the microwave without shorting the electrical outlet, and the handle had a threadwork of cracks that he knew would one day give way and douse his skin in scalding coffee. Every mug he picks up, he compares to that mug, and though he doesn’t regret that he left it behind, he misses it with a surprising despondency on quiet mornings.

In Arthur’s place, Eames would not even believe he’d ever loved that mug.

He explains it away in myriad manners: _Can’t love a thing, Arthur,_ a shrug and a sympathetic smile, as if Arthur is the one who lost the antique credenza to a client’s raid on his apartment. _Well, I should think I’ll make it to Italy again,_ as if Arthur had to hurry away from the stained canvas satchel at Customs, the books in Italian, the Cinque Terra pottery inside. Once, _I don’t really give a toss,_ in the wake of an old lover’s marriage.

It’s possible Eames really didn’t give a toss. Arthur never had tangible cause to suspect it. But that’s Eames’ gift, isn’t it? He wields it as a weapon with almost sacrilegious impunity.

For the first six months, Eames apparently didn’t want him. Oh, he slept with Arthur. Fucked him hard and kissed him mercilessly, and completely ignored the things he’d uttered that first night on the ship, the words that had splintered all of Arthur’s walls and bathed Eames in another light and damn well _explained_ everything about him, just for an instant. The first six months, in spite of the odd too-telling kiss, Eames also left without notice, took extended jobs on the other side of the world, dropped Arthur a trinket in the mail before Arthur even properly realized he was gone. Eames fell in easily with others, went out to bars, laughed and joked and lived events that Arthur heard about later from other people. But he always turned up in San Francisco again eventually, and it wasn’t until the sixth month was up that Arthur realized Eames hadn’t been with anyone else, hadn’t taken anyone to bed, and hadn’t pinned Arthur down either because that meant staking an investment in too many things he wasn’t supposed to need.

Want.

“Saffold says hey,” Arthur says one day, and Eames stops, looks up from where he stands at the toaster oven. He’s in baggy sweats and the rattiest t-shirt Arthur has seen this side of a rag bucket.

“Work with him in Zaragoza, then?” Eames asks neutrally after a minute. Arthur smiles thinly. Saffold is young and interested, a point man in the making who worships Eames like an older brother and will never, ever have his favor in return for reasons Arthur is willing to exploit if it will straighten something out in his own mind.

He’s pretty sure Eames isn’t the only one Saffold worships.

“He’s coming along,” Arthur answers. “Asked to join me on the job for Mariam. South Africa?” 

Eames’ nostrils flare a little. He looks down, aimless until he opens the little door and pulls his toast out. He slaps it onto a plate with more force than necessary and snags the butter dish. “That’s… a month long?”

“At least.” Actually, Santi’s taking point on that job. Saffold doesn’t know it. Arthur only negotiated the details with Santi last night.

Eames clears his throat. Ye gods, sometimes he’s so fucking transparent, and thank the lord for it, or Arthur would have washed his hands of this during the first bout of dismay, the first flippant _oh, Arthur, sorry, love, I’m in El Salvador, connection’s bad._ Arthur is not known for taking the really devastating hits well.

But Eames honestly thinks he doesn’t want things. It would be endearing if it didn’t have such capability of ruining his life. 

For three weeks, Eames stays in town. Spends every night in Arthur’s bed. Wraps himself in Arthur’s sheets, and wraps Arthur in him like he’s marking him. On the first day of August, Arthur waits in the kitchen with his mug of coffee— still not the silver and ceramic one— until Eames shuffles out of the bedroom and stops in his tracks. Arthur lifts his mug in a toast and takes a drink.

Eames spreads his arms, gives his head a shake. “Port Elizabeth?”

Arthur feigns surprise. “No, I gave that job to Santi. Didn’t I say?”

Eames looks right through him. Gets angry and then calm again in the space of two seconds. He shrugs his shoulders and goes to the sink for a mug of his own. 

“Thought I’d go to Brasilia instead,” Arthur hums.

The mug clanks in the sink. He can feel Eames staring at him. “We don’t need a point.”

“I don’t need a job.”

A brief silence. “Just what the hell is this?”

Arthur doesn’t answer that day, and Eames doesn’t force it out of him. Later, in a humid hotel room in Planaltina, Eames rakes a hand through his hair and rants about his incompetent extractor, then murmurs more groundbreaking things against Arthur’s mouth in the enormous Jacuzzi bathtub. Even later than that, in San Francisco again, and then in Vientiane, Eames stops looking at Arthur as if he himself doesn’t quite belong there.

In retrospect, Arthur considers the time off time well spent. 

** 

(“You know,” Eames ponders out loud late one afternoon, after he’s been shagged sweaty and lax across the end of a rather nice inn bed, “I think you might have turned me into a bottom.”

Arthur lifts his head from Eames’ sternum where he has been huffing unsteadily. He fingers the stubble on Eames’ chin, a spot Eames knows he missed while shaving this morning. “Should put that on my resume,” Arthur utters, low in his throat like he’s just woken up.

Eames laughs hard, almost able to ignore the burn when Arthur pulls out of him. Arthur rises to his feet and stretches, a long line of torso, thighs, and calves. Instead of immediately pulling on his trousers as usual— Arthur rarely bothers with his pants, but he does cover up— he crawls onto the quilt as naked as Eames and drops there on his side.

An hour later, Arthur corners him in the kitchenette as he’s retrieving glasses from the cupboard for dinner. His eyebrows are lowered, his mouth pinched. “You’d better be willing to fuck me again, Eames.”

It takes him a moment, and then he sets the glasses down and invades Arthur’s space, wrapping him close and kissing him deep and filthy. “Darling, say the word.” 

He touches Arthur’s mouth with his pinky.

Rules are unnecessary. Understandings are a must.)

~fin~


	3. Three times Eames came for Arthur and one time Eames... yeah.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eames has a history of being present at all the right moments.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNING: graphic description of the results of torture.**  
> 
> Other notes: Number One takes place after the events of With Teeth (UnDays part 1). Thank you to dysonrules and snottygrrl for the very helpful beta work, and to coffeejunkii for being my sounding board!

.  
.  
.

**Three times Eames came for Arthur…**

 

_One_

 

It’s not often that Arthur miscalculates, and he always feels a little self-destructive about it afterward. Tonight, one day into the new job with the old one still lingering like a clingy, wet fog, the sensation of tiptoeing at the edge of a cliff is especially potent. The last job is not dying like it should, but pressing instead against every sensible brain cell until he acts like a petulant child and forgets himself. Like this.

Maybe in the daylight he could have done this alone, but now, with night in full swing and his survival mechanisms completely revived, it’s the sort of shortcut an amateur would make, and get killed over.

Arthur exhales, bypassing Reynolds’ number, scrolling lower and hating it. He’s lucky their third team member is in town already, by the grace of mere hours. Arthur hasn’t even seen Eames yet and already he’s—

But it doesn’t matter, because this is very much essential and he does not need to compound his momentary stupidity.

The line rings twice before the connection clicks open.

“A little busy right now,” Eames says by way of greeting.

Arthur can hear voices and the unexpected rush of salsa music. “And I wouldn’t call you if it weren’t necessary.”

Eames makes an amused sound. “I am aware of that.”

Someone close on Eames’ end speaks but Arthur can only make out mumbling. He looks at his watch. Irritation and embarrassment and something else bubble up, and he considers shutting the phone off.

“I need backup, Eames,” he forces out. Looks at his watch again. “Hopefully in twenty minutes.”

Hopefully? He winces.

A moment’s breath and Eames is speaking away from the phone, conciliatory tones. “Apologies, love, I’ve got to go.”

The same person as before protests, but already the sound is drawing away. Eames’ voice next comes low and focused. “Where are you?”

Arthur gives him the address. He thinks about laughter, about bright brassy horns and staccato drumbeats, and says, “You might want a suit.”

“There in a tick, darling,” is all Eames says.

**

Eames shows up in a crisp blazer and dark pressed trousers. Shiny shoes. The only sign of where he came from is a certain warmth to his face and throat that is rapidly fading. He looks nothing like the last time Arthur was this close to him, nothing.

They don’t have much time, certainly not enough to explain what Eames is in for. Already Arthur can hear car doors slamming. He thumbs Eames to the windowsill on his right. Eames ducks his chin in acknowledgment and takes a seat— more of a lean, actually, with his ankles crossed but his weight still solidly on one foot. Ready to move. Arthur takes a breath, lets it out, faces the door.

When they knock, he doesn’t move. “It’s open.”

There are three of them, two flanking the high roller. Arthur gauges the ones behind for signs of a switch, but no, the big fish is indeed in the middle, everything about his body language broadcasts it. Arthur catches Eames’ tiniest of nods, confirming his assessment. 

It seems these men are not as flawlessly changeable as certain individuals Arthur knows.

Eames is using a letter opener to clean his nails. It’s a nice touch, there for a reason but not as threatening or obvious as an actual knife. It’ll register low, set the foundation for caution.

And the three visitors are cautious, if not especially understated. This seems to be how they work, in force rather than finesse. Arthur’s just lucky his contact let him know an hour before their arrival instead of after. They pause inside the room and give it a onceover, and the one in the middle approaches Arthur.

“Andrews?”

Arthur nods. “Forrester?”

Forrester frowns, but nods back. “Who’s this?” He gestures at Eames, a wave of his hand that would have dismissed anyone who hadn’t made an art out of posturing.

Eames gives him a wan smile. “Not your problem. Unless you make it so.”

Forrester glances at Arthur. Arthur gazes back. He hears it when Eames begins to pick his nails again.

“We never agreed on another person,” Forrester says.

Arthur lifts an eyebrow at the two bodyguards. “No. We didn’t.”

Forrester steps forward, and Eames is abruptly a lot closer than he was before.

“Ah ah,” Eames says, calm as the surface of a reflecting pool. He makes a flicking motion with the letter opener. “Step back, please.”

Forrester looks at Arthur. “He your bouncer?”

“You’ll have to ask him,” Arthur says, bland.

Eames gives Forrester another tiny smile, one that appears suddenly on his mouth as if it has always been there.

Forrester steps back again. His guards rustle.

“You owe us money,” Arthur says mildly, because business is best served immediately in this sort of company. He tilts his head to one side and touches his forefinger discreetly to his pocket, where his die rests. “An additional twenty percent was the decided figure.”

Forrester gestures at Eames. “I don’t owe him anything.”

“Me, then,” Arthur says without pause.

“Don’t worry… Forrester, is it?” Eames is twirling the letter opener now like he does his poker chip. It’s a neat trick, the metal catching the light and sending it to play over the faces of Forrester’s guards. And their eyes are certainly on it. Eames is as far from the lanky and loose gangbanger as he can be, neatly dressed, collected, but just like that, Arthur jettisons back to a dark club and another night, one he could get sucked down in if he’s not careful. 

“I don’t do this sort of thing for _money,”_ Eames continues, like money is a dirty thing, like Eames is interested in far worse. Blood, perhaps. Watching the way a life departs a body. Even Arthur has to wonder where Eames picked up that particular tone of voice, the way it prickles over every last nerve in his spine.

There is… really very little he knows about Eames. Oh, the regular background information, yes. Arthur is blisteringly thorough. Give him a year more in the business, and he doubts there will be anyone in the world able to hide information from him if he needs to know it. But Eames, the man, is another story. The innards, the motivation, the emotional cricks and cracks— the lack thereof— are much more ephemeral things to trace.

A person could work his whole life beside a killer and not once understand the reasons behind what that killer does. Or come to a brutal understanding an instant too late.

“But,” Eames says after a tense moment of silence, grinning that unsettling little boy grin, “if you’d like to stick with a mundane reason, then I want him alive, as he’s currently _my_ method of getting paid.” 

He taps the letter opener against his thigh.

But Forrester is a heavy hitter, and it’s not all just for show. He conducts his business himself, turning to Arthur with ease and venom alike. “Your team was good. But they weren’t twenty thousand dollars apiece good.”

“No, they’re worth my original price, and twenty percent interest for my wasted time. That’s not including _their_ wasted time. I’d be happy to re-tabulate for you.”

Forrester’s nostrils flare. He steps well inside the boundary and Eames unfolds at Arthur’s side, the letter opener between two fingers like a cigarette.

“I’d back up,” Eames offers. “If you don’t want to get shot.”

Forrester looks down at Eames’ makeshift blade. “You’re not even packing.”

“Well spotted,” Eames says. _“I’m_ not.”

The speed with which Forrester turns and sees that, yes, Arthur has a weapon too, one with moving parts held down low at hip level... It’s a little too much like a high. The gun is small and Arthur would never make it out alive with just this, but coupled with Eames’ presence, with the way the two guards freeze, it’s enough.

Raising stakes and all that.

“Let’s just put everything away,” Arthur mutters. “Do this with some amount of grace. Please.”

**

All in all, it was a good idea, bringing Eames in tonight. Once Forrester departs, the room’s silence is almost a weight upon the ears. Neither of them move for a while after the sound of the car fades.

“Darling,” Eames ventures at last, “you can bargain on my behalf anytime.”

When Arthur turns around, the man standing before him is not the same as the one he’s been standing alongside for the past half hour. It’s a shock, zipping down his spine and yanking him up straight like a hand shoving at the small of his back.

Eames stands there in the same flashy blazer, the same shiny shoes. The same sharp lines accentuating his legs. It’s not the effect of a fitted pair of jeans, not by a long shot, but it’s also not like it was just a moment ago. The threat— and Arthur’s having a hard time believing it was ever there at all— has bled right out. Eames’ smile is playful, like the two of them share a secret, a joke that Arthur—

_Fuck._

Fuck, no. There is very little Arthur will admit to, mostly because he weighs decisions too intently to make ignorant mistakes. But this. This is him very nearly getting blindsided. Again.

He _doesn’t know Eames._ Not the Eames in the club three months ago or the Eames on the phone thirty minutes ago. He didn’t know then, and he doesn’t know now.

He doesn’t know who this man is. But— now that he’s aware again, he can feel his way around this idea with curiosity rather than discomfort— it would be so very easy to forget about that and accept this as the real Eames. 

Arthur lifts an eyebrow and checks his phone, making sure the transaction has gone through. He shoots off texts to his former teammates, asking them to confirm their payments as soon as possible. “I’d just as soon you not get into a situation that requires my style of bargaining, Mr. Eames.”

Eames smirks. It’s plainly appreciative, and it’s again completely unlike the appreciation Arthur thought he would recognize from that murky, sweaty club on their last job. There is something raw in this version, less refined. Less… adapted? He’s starting to wonder again if this isn’t the truer set of emotions. Or if Eames has a whole bag full that Arthur has yet to see.

“Another minute,” he says, and pockets his cell. “And then we can leave.”

Eames visibly hesitates. “I think the best course of action would—”

“Would be for me to leave with you,” Arthur says. Eames’ eyebrows climb, mouth still open around the word that faltered. Arthur stares him down. He may not be seasoned, but neither is he prideful, and he’s not an idiot.

Eames’ eyes flick over him once. “Alright, darling,” he says at last, much more placid than anything Forrester heard. Arthur is put in mind of lazy spring warmth. “Lead on.”

In the second that follows, Arthur can remember kissing that mouth as if he’s just leaned out of it. And that’s strange, too, because right now, Eames isn’t that man, either. 

“Don’t call me darling.”

They take Arthur’s car. He has no idea how Eames got there, if he took a taxi or, hell, if whatever vehicle he’s leaving behind is stolen. Arthur could boost a car if he put his mind to it, but it’s decidedly not his world. It feels, at that moment, very much Eames’. 

Halfway along a street downtown, Eames raps the dashboard with his knuckles. “This is fine.”

Arthur pulls over to the curb and Eames gets out. The street is busy with foot traffic but there are no special points of interest that Arthur can see. Just various storefronts, a mini mart, what looks like a defunct theater. He grabs the gear stick and leans over. 

“You want a ride to your hotel?”

“Not just yet.” Eames taps the open window frame, lifts his eyes to Arthur’s, then straightens. “Tomorrow then?”

“Hey.”

Eames leans down to look through the window again, eyebrows raised.

Arthur meets his stare. “I appreciate it.”

That smile again, small enough to question, not small enough to ignore. Eames nods once. His eyes dip and rise back to Arthur’s face. “My genuine pleasure, Arthur.”

And that’s that.

**

(Eames is, astoundingly, eight thousand flush the next morning, clearly from Arthur’s cut, and all for walking into a warehouse at the last minute and brandishing a bent letter opener. He makes a disbelieving sound at his phone, shakes his head, and towels his hair dry. If he gets out the door in ten minutes, he’ll probably beat Reynolds to the kitschy little meeting room the man has selected as their headquarters for this go-around.) 

**  
**  
**

 

_Two_

 

Arthur comes awake in a river of pain, with someone much too close in front of him.

He jerks back and agony spikes into the center of his chest. But a voice interrupts, riding the swell as easily as wind.

“Arthur, it’s alright. S’alright.”

The accent slithers up his spine, not pain, not pain at all for once, and Arthur sags back into the chair with a worryingly damp gasp. “Eames?”

He forces an eye open. Eames crouches before him, eyes roving his face. He’s not touching Arthur; his hands hover, one raised as if to cup his chin, the other held flat just over his chest, keeping distance with Arthur’s jerky breathing.

“Tell me where,” Eames says, urgent.

He’s still in this godforsaken bathroom, despite the fever dreams. Arthur manages a semi-deep breath, enough to say more than two words at once. “Ribs. I think. H… Hands.” His hands are tied behind him, a swollen mass of heat, he has no idea what’s wrong with them. “And my leg.”

Eames’ hands touch down at last, his upper thigh, and Arthur jumps, curses himself instantly. He’s got to stop moving, he could be doing more damage, he has no idea what else they—

“No hit to the artery,” Eames soothes, pressing his flesh without fanfare. “Going to wrap it up for you.”

Where. Where are they, are they still— He struggles, doesn’t realize he’s actually managed to speak until Eames shushes him again, working the buttons free on his own shirt. “They’ve more than they can handle. We’re fine, we’re just aces for the moment.”

He slips the shirt off his shoulders and snaps it out by a sleeve, then gathers Arthur’s left foot and braces it against his thigh, raising the back of Arthur’s leg off the chair. The paleness of Eames’ skin contrasts sharply with the black undershirt he’s wearing, and Arthur is distracted by the bunched muscle in Eames’ shoulders as he works. Just beneath the tank top’s right strap, a tattoo swirls thick and dark over the curve of flesh. On the other arm— 

Arthur hisses as Eames shifts his leg again, his shoulders wrenching from the odd angle. His hands are tied to the chair, then. A touch to his jaw refocuses him, and he looks down to find Eames watching him.

“Alright, darling, one, two, three—”

And then Arthur really does scream as the shirt cinches tight just above the wound. Eames wraps it again, pulls again. Arthur squeezes his eyes shut, keels over trying to catch his breath. “Knife, I don’t know… how long ago…”

“Okay. Hold on.”

Eames leans around him again, not touching where he can help it. A snick and a little sawing, and Arthur’s hands fall free of the chair and each other. He drops to the left, the world tipping horribly, but Eames catches him by the shoulders and eases him back upright. He takes Arthur by the wrists and draws his hands forward, and then does nothing for so long that Arthur drags his eyes open again.

Eames is staring at his hands. 

Arthur looks and groans. They are a hideous mess, the fingers bloody in swaths that darken the closer they get to the tips. A moment of blinking and he remembers why: half of his fingernails have been wrenched out, the skin raw and red. They look deformed.

“Arthur, you said your ribs?” Eames is moving again, settling Arthur’s hands carefully in his lap and reaching back to shove the door to the hallway open. The corridor is dark and Arthur can hear sounds, but beyond that, he doesn’t know anything. He nods, wincing as his chest flares hot.

“Broken or cracked?”

“Not sure. Broken.” They certainly hit him hard enough.

“Anything else?”

Not that he can remember. 

“Alright. Okay, Arthur? Can you put your arms around my neck?”

Yes, he can do that. Eames’ skin is warm and clean where his forearms touch. He can’t do more than hang his hands limply against Eames’ back, so he hooks his elbows high enough over Eames’ shoulders to gain some leverage. But he’s as tall as Eames, maybe a little taller, he has no idea how they’re going to—

Eames gets an arm under his knees, tenses, then lifts him right out of the chair.

Arthur realizes he’s still holding his breath when Eames turns sideways to maneuver them through the doorway. He exhales shakily. His chest is a mass of fire and he feels like things are grinding around in there. Eames steps over a body just outside the room, and Arthur tries to straighten, but he can’t even do that. His back rages from sitting like he did for so long. Eames shifts his grip carefully, working Arthur a little further down in his arms, and something eases. Arthur lets out a sigh.

Gunfire. That’s gunfire, but it sounds distant. Or— no, that’s, that’s his ears. Arthur inhales, sharp and panicky, but the mantle is descending, sinking lower and lower over him. He swallows, tastes iron, and chews hard at the inside of his mouth, desperate not to fall asleep.

“Di’n’t…” God, he’s slurring, he’s going to pass out. He takes a ragged breath through his nose. “I di… di’n’t…”

Eames exhales warm across the side of his face. “I know it, darling.”

“Talk t’me,” he begs, “’mes—”

“Did you know, they were arguing,” Eames breaks in, as normal as if they are sitting over coffee on a bright morning, “about who had to go back in there. Seems none of them could get anything accomplished. I think they were afraid of you, darling.”

“Y’keep calling me darling?” Arthur mumbles.

“And why not, I ask you? About the only time in the world you can’t do a thing about it.”

He feels himself sliding and forces his arms tighter, closer against Eames’ neck. Eames smells of sweat and… fabric softener. It’s enough to burn past some of the fog, the idea of Eames pouring floral smelling liquid into a washing machine, as if he’s a normal person. Arthur pictures a tidy laundry room, an ironing board hidden away behind folding doors, a cheap but thick bathroom rug under Eames’ bare feet.

“How di’you find me?” he slurs.

“You’re a brilliant point, Arthur, but some of us can still out-research you.”

He snorts, or attempts to. “No’ likely.”

Eames’ fingers tighten against the outside of his knee. He doesn’t say anything more, though, and Arthur’s about to chastise him for it, a little frantically, when Eames pushes through another door into… alright, outside, they’re outside. The gunfire erupts far more clearly and Arthur jumps, curls his fingers into Eames’ undershirt without thinking, and cries out at the _excruciating_ pain that jags into his palms. His hands are already on fire, blood flowing back into deprived capillaries, but this pain is all about his mutilated fingertips. He presses his mouth into Eames’ shoulder, muffling the sounds he can’t stop, and wonders a second later if he was biting down. If it was hurting Eames. 

A second after that, it doesn’t matter. He jounces in Eames’ arms, and his mind goes blessedly black. 

**

When he wakes again, he hears breathing. Someone’s hand is cool and light around his wrist.

“Eames,” he sighs.

Slender fingers take up his hand. “No, my dearest,” a woman says, tone full of smiles, “it is only me.”

Arthur opens his eyes and finds hers bright and damp, face radiant all the same. His heart flips and rises, harrowing relief rushing through. “Mal?”

She takes his hand— heavily bandaged— in both of hers and presses his wrist to her cheek.

It comes to him slowly, like syrup sliding. “Was you.” Of course Mal found him. Of course Mal looked for him. And yes, Mal can out-research him, if anyone can. “Dom?”

She shakes her head. “Not here. Not yet. I am just glad you’re safe.”

There is no pain, but there is tubing stretching from his other wrist to a hanging bag of saline or something more potent. It’s someone’s bedroom, framed photos of landscapes on the walls and lacy curtains, an old dresser with a vanity. He doesn’t recognize any of it. His belly clenches up on an idea he doesn’t have the wherewithal for quite yet. He knows he… has to know. Feels like all he’s saying lately is the man’s name, in different lilts. “Eames?”

Mal shakes her head again and looks contrite. “He could not stay. But I will message him now. Let him know you are awake.”

“Guns, Mal?” Mal doesn’t deal in guns, not the kind Arthur remembers hearing. 

“I left the hardware to Eames. His companion, she is a spitfire, isn’t she?”

“Yeah.” Belle, then. What he knows of Belle often involves heavy artillery. Arthur settles back, lets his hand rest limp in Mal’s and listens to her voice more than her words as she tells him… anything. Everything. Words in song.

My god, what kind of favors did she have to pull in? He owes her. He owes her so very much, and he hopes he can repay the debt. 

**

His fingernails grow back, normal except for the middle finger of his right hand, where the strange new ridge never quite transfers over into any dreamscape. It’s not until much later that Arthur finds out that it wasn’t Mal who bargained. She simply begged help from a friend. 

Eames is the one who cashed in on more than one substantial debt. 

**

(“Do you love him or something?”

Eames snorts into the humid room. His skin sticks to the sheets. The window is open and doing nothing but polluting the air with honking and curses, but the lights outside frame Belle’s naked body in fierce shadow. “Yes, _that’s_ it, of course.”

Belle remains still as stone. The only thing he can see is the gleam of her eyes within the shape of her face.

Eames sighs and smiles wide. “My dear, dreamshare needs Arthur. That level of skill makes him necessary to all of us. I’m just doing my duty to my craft.” 

She hesitates. “I have heard he’s good.”

Eames shrugs, body and face. “If you’d like to understate it.”

Her smile relaxes, quick-switch, unsettling. She comes back to the bed and crawls into it, and he pulls her in by the elbow— “Yes, come _here,_ you ridiculously nimble—” and they fall to. 

Afterward, Eames stares up at the ceiling and counts it a cautious win. Belle’s universe is a strange, violent warp of a world. She is impossible to predict when she decides something, or someone, belongs to her.)

**  
**  
**

 

_Three_

 

Arthur makes it as far as Likoni before his head stops swimming and starts grinding instead. It’s too hot for his coat. The late night air buzzes with the heat and people glance his way more often than he likes.

Less often than they would, though, if he removed the garment entirely.

He gets a room two floors above a little alleyway and closes the drapes mostly by falling against them. He turns on the shower, cold, half to see if he can jar himself loose, the other half… he doesn’t even know. When he pulls his phone out of the pile of his clothing, the screen looks diamond-paned, full of sharp edges. 

The last he heard, Eames was in Mombasa, in Kuze or Makadara. Arthur hopes to god his information isn’t out of date.

He manages to text the address, as far as he can remember it. He doesn’t fully recognize the words spelling their way out before his eyes, but he adds _Bring water_ to the end, and falls into the shower. The icy deluge sends his heart jack-rabbiting against every rib until he fumbles the handle hot, unable to stand another instant. It’s all of two minutes before his side forces him out. Arthur rubs off with the only towel, bullies his pants back on with shaking hands, and then sits on the end of the bed and twists about, trying to see the wound.

Should have been stitched. Wasn’t that a fucking mistake. It’s oozing blood again, the tear looking ragged at the edges now. He presses on the skin around it to check for infection, but the whole area is such an inflamed mess that he has to jam his shirt into his mouth to keep from screaming about it. He feels like the bulbs in the lamps are eyes, the knobs on the dresser drawers blinking at him. He pops very basic painkillers, ties up his side as best he can with gauze from his first aid satchel, and texts Cobb.

_Got klimczak. Gets us cobol. 3 wks, astana, karagandy. details when i’m awake again._

Outside, someone calls someone else’s name, and that someone else, a woman, laughs sharp as a screech owl. Cobb’s text booms, a church’s bell.

_How much?_

Arthur squeezes his phone. He resends the last sentence of his original message with a few furious jabs. Because he’s so very sick of the gaping of his suitcase and the clatter of hangers in hotel closets, the helplessness that follows the flash of faces he can’t picture correctly anymore.

He wants to sleep, but his eyes shear the light off in shards and the room’s corners feel like they are full of skittering. He fumbles for another shirt, then remembers his wound. Checks his phone and finds no return messages. How long should he give it anyway? How long does it take to get from—

“Arthur,” Eames says when he gets in through the door. “Fuck’s sake.”

Arthur looks at the clock, but can’t remember what time it was when he texted. “Shut the door, he mutters.

Eames has two bottles of Evian, still sweating from whatever cooling apparatus he dragged them out of. Arthur downs the first in a series of swallows, then slumps forward again, wiping at where it dripped out the side of his mouth. 

“Were you shot?”

“No.” He finds the first aid bag again and passes it over. “Can’t reach to stitch it.”

Eames takes the bag. “You have any local?”

Arthur shakes his head, and Eames smirks. “Then don’t hate me in the morning,” he offers. He’s about to sit down on the bed when someone shouts again outside, and Arthur jumps, fisting his shirt in both hands. Eames freezes. 

“Arthur.” Hands on his chin, tilting his head into the light. He hears Eames curse. “What did you take?”

“Not a sedative,” Arthur growls. He tosses the shirt aside, suddenly angry, and shuts his eyes against the weird contortions of light. He tries his best to bare his side with a minimum of pain.

Eames sits down behind him and stitches him up, Arthur with a hand white-knuckled against the windowsill.

“What did you take?” Eames asks again halfway through, swabbing the wound copiously with betadine from Arthur’s kit.

“Somnacin additive.” There’s no point in hiding something that has fucked him up for Eames’ eyes already. “New formula.”

“New chemist?”

“Alistair Klimczak.”

Eames inhales through his nose, the sound distinctly considering. “Don’t know him. Where did you find him?”

“He found me.” Short sentences work, both for the pain and the fog. 

“What was the job?”

“Wasn’t.”

He can _hear_ the furrow in Eames’ brow, like, really hear it. It sounds like crackling newspaper, what the hell was in that shit? “What was it for then?”

“He wanted to test it.”

Eames’ hands still, swift and sudden. “What the ever-loving fuck.”

Arthur grits his teeth. Doesn’t look back. “We needed the contact.”

“We.”

“Cobb. Needed the contact.”

Eames is reordering his words now before he says them aloud, the air is tense with it. “And he knows what you’ve done to get it for him.”

Arthur is silent, even as the needlework resumes, pricking over and over.

“And this?” Eames asks at last. “Unless the new compounds are injected via razor—”

“Butterfly knife. I wasn’t myself, coming here. Someone took advantage.”

“You, Arthur? Allowed this?” Eames’ voice is unamused. He prods the wound deliberately. Arthur hisses, and brings his fist down on Eames’ thigh so hard Eames grunts.

“I didn’t allow jack shit!”

After a moment, Eames hums. “Someone I should be seeing to, then?”

Arthur’s laugh is short, derisive. “Not anymore,” he growls, and Eames’ mouth lifts at the corner. The stitches are finished in a strangely comfortable silence.

When it’s done, Eames cleans him up, then picks the lock on the empty room next door and returns with the bedspread. He slings it over one arm, pats Arthur down at the hips— odd, but Arthur can only wobble a bit stupidly as it happens— then takes the stolen blanket and the other one and wraps them both around Arthur, shoulders to thighs. He gathers Arthur back just enough to set him off balance, and pushes him to lean against the headboard. 

Eames then rummages around on the floor for some damn reason. A moment later, Arthur’s jacket is in his lap, and one of his hands is being guided palm-down over the side pocket.

He recognizes the little lump there with enough shock to snatch at his breath. Eames catches his wrist, stills his startled spasm. “Keep hold of that,” Eames murmurs. Straightens. “I’ll be back, two ticks.”

Arthur loses track, just rolls his die around and around until his fingers ache with the sustained pressure. His side is a swollen blur of throbbing. It feels as if it reaches from ribs to thigh and around to the small of his back. Eventually, Arthur isn’t sure exactly when, Eames is back in the room, locking the door, a doubled up plastic cup in his hand.

“Warm milk,” he says, “and cinnamon. Congratulations, darling, your landlady thinks we have a daughter.”

Arthur grimaces but takes the cup and drinks a sip. He ends up holding it in both hands, more for the heat than the flavor. And Eames, settled into the only chair in the room, asks him questions.

“Where are you?”

“Are you serious?”

Eames smiles up at the corner of the ceiling. “Took you ten seconds to answer that.”

No, it… didn’t. Yes. It did. He looks Eames over slowly. “You look like you’re made of razor blades.”

Eames is quiet for a moment. Then, “Darling. Don’t flatter.”

Arthur takes a deep breath. “Again.”

Eames reinforces Arthur’s least favorite countries, his sevens times tables up to one hundred-eighty-nine, his first tour, where he went to school. His mother’s maiden name. Eames demands he recite Yeats’ _The Second Coming,_ and Arthur does. Eames wants to know the given and middle names of Cobb’s children again, and Arthur tells him.

Eames nods. “Good. That’s good.”

They have no mother. Not anymore. Arthur doesn’t have to say it out loud, but he does anyway, because he can. He remembers, all too clearly. Eames looks at him from the corner of his eye for a long while.

Arthur is glad that Eames, out of everyone, doesn’t suggest it was Dom’s doing.

Eames huffs. “Of course it wasn’t. Man was devoted to her.” His gaze settles heavily on Arthur’s face. “And you to him,” he continues quietly, “as it turns out.”

It’s Arthur’s turn to snort. “Isn’t like that.”

Eames’ smile is faint. “No doubt.” 

There’s something Arthur needs to say. He can’t pin it down, but he can feel the sadness inherent, a misfortune he is incapable of preventing. He _hates_ this, hates what his brain has turned into. 

“Is he worth it, then?” Eames asks.

“Can’t decide a person’s worth.” Arthur’s not sure he actually got it out in the right order, but Eames contemplates him as if he’s contemplating the words, too, so maybe he did.

“I disagree. I think you can.” Eames leans forward and eases the cup free of Arthur’s hands. He sets it on the bedside table. “If you don’t tell him about this—”

“No,” Arthur grunts. Eames frowns deeply, but Arthur overrides him. “He has enough on his plate. He doesn’t need this, too.”

It seems after a moment of silence— or many moments, Arthur’s having trouble distinguishing— that Eames has subsided. Arthur blinks and blinks again. There is a gray prism off-center in his vision. He sighs. Whatever else, tomorrow he’ll have one hell of a migraine.

Eames passes him the other water bottle.

“Have you looked at what you’re doing for him, Arthur? Truly looked, I mean.”

“Yes.” Because he has. He doesn’t do anything without looking it right through its center, without calculating four separate potential outcomes. This exchange involved only him and Klimczak, which is just how he wanted it; the more people you add to a situation, the more cracks spider out from the initial shatter point, and the harder it becomes to control.

This outcome, though, this was one of the four. This was why he chose Mombasa. But he only foresaw up to Eames’ arrival, and now he can’t make out what happens next.

And that’s… that’s superfluous right now. Arthur struggles to get his head around the main thread and what he wants to get across. “Have you looked at what you’re _not_ doing, Eames?”

Eames doesn’t answer immediately. “In what light, darling?” Though the pet name settles on the air in the same shape, there is nothing playful about it. Arthur can’t think of the last time he heard Eames speak in such a leaden tone. 

Almost as if he can see something Arthur cannot.

“You knew them, too,” he says. It feels like a secret, just for them. “You knew _her.”_

This time Eames doesn’t answer at all.

Arthur clears his throat. The sound grates like it shouldn’t, but at least now he can recognize the human element in it. “He’s important to me. She was. She still is. _Damn_ it,” he finishes on a whisper. It’s been too long to be so sad about this. He has things to do.

When he looks up, Eames is gazing at him, straight on. Not even trying to hide it. His skin has slipped soft again, the edges of him no longer honed. He looks like something Arthur could touch, maybe needs to touch. Now, at this point. Here.

He wants to ask what lengths Eames would go to for someone he cares about. But he might already know, and it’s not something he wants to consider, not like this, when he can make too much sense of it.

If Eames had been there, at Klimczak’s, Arthur thinks he would have seen the cracks draw inward instead.

“Arthur,” Eames says, and stops. His mouth closes slowly, a fatalism that tells Arthur that Eames has decided against whatever he might have uttered.

“Say it,” Arthur grinds out before he realizes he’s going to, and Eames looks at him, a slow refocusing that hurts for some reason.

“No,” he answers after a long, level moment.

Maybe it’s fear. Maybe Arthur doesn’t actually want to hear it. He swallows, and swallows again because the sensation has odd edges. His hands feel clammy, his face too dry, and Eames’ eyes… are too blue-gray.

 _Stay,_ he wants to say. Isn’t sure he doesn’t say it, for a second. _Not here, not in this room, but in my circumference. Stay and do this with me, for him, for her. Until it’s over, and I’m done._

_Stay and make sure I finish._

Eames takes a breath through his nose, and his nostrils flare with a delicacy Arthur has long lost his ability to ignore.

“If you stay with him…” Eames looks toward the shaded window as if Cobb is waiting just outside, hovering in midair. When he returns to Arthur’s face, something has slid loose, out of reach. It’s not comforting in the way looseness should be. On anyone but Eames, it would be a doorway in. “I don’t know the facts. I only know what I’ve heard. But what happened to them is twisted up. By him, or by her, I don’t know. Do not go that way, Arthur. Whatever it is, wherever it leads, just…” He sighs. “Don’t.”

He lets his words hang, then bumps the arms of the chair with both palms as if settling something, and starts to get up. Arthur feels inexplicable sorrow.

“Why do you always see when I screw it all up?”

Eames stops halfway out of his chair. He eyes Arthur, then steps closer, bending over and leaning on one arm on the bed. “Darling, you don’t ‘screw it all up,’” he says in Arthur’s ear. “You aren’t capable.”

He expects Eames to draw away, but Eames stays there, close and alive. Arthur can feel the motion tamped down, its very own heartbeat. Eames raises a hand and cups the back of Arthur’s head, not down at his nape but up near the top, as if he means to pull Arthur to rest against his shoulder. His fingers draw up close and spread again, this time threading through Arthur’s hair over his scalp.

The corner of Eames’ mouth shivers, just in Arthur’s line of sight. 

Eames rises finally with a soft grunt, kneads his back with one hand, and moves away from the bed toward the bathroom. Arthur feels the places where his fingers rested, a cold flush against his skin. 

**

(“You’re buying,” Eames says, because Cobb _is._ Cobb will buy him whatever he wants, including, inevitably, his absence. Which he will promptly not bestow.

He’s set to catch this onrushing wind, to sidle right into Dominic Cobb’s path. To fall in beside Arthur again. To run interference, as, incredibly, Cobb requests anyway not five minutes later. If Arthur’s going to go off like he has been, then Eames wants to see it at work. To understand why the fuck ever. 

So, “Piss off,” he says, and the next words out of his mouth will be about Arthur, about drugs and knife fights and sacrifice, followed by a request to “Go fuck yourself, thank you, not your friends.”

And then Cobb proposes inception.) 

**  
**  
**

 

**…and one time Eames came for Arthur.**

 

“This how it’s going to be now?” Eames’ back hits the wall, and Arthur hears his breath jump at the last word. He grabs Eames’ hips, fixes them where he wants them and presses, just hard enough. When Eames doesn’t resist, Arthur releases his hold and curls all ten fingers over the top of Eames’ belt, bracketing the buckle with his hands.

He leans in, close enough to smell Eames’ skin through his shirt, close enough for his chin to brush fabric when Eames’ hips hitch forward. Arthur looks up, over the planes of Eames’ torso into his eyes. Tightens his grip and gives him a firm jerk, enough to get his thumb under the belt loop and start working it loose. “Keep talking,” he says.

Eames drops his head back to the wall with a manic laugh. His hands settle on Arthur’s wrists, but it’s a light hold; they do not hinder. Arthur works his belt free and debates sliding it out of its loops completely.

“Definition of surreal,” Eames says as Arthur abandons the ends of his belt and sets to work on the buttons of his fly instead. “Usually you’re begging me to shut the hell up.”

Arthur frowns up at him. “I haven’t told you to shut up in years.” Eames is grinning though, his eyes dark and bright at the same time. Arthur gives his hips an upward stroke with both palms and a remonstrative squeeze just beneath his shirt hem. “And when I beg, Eames? I don’t waste it on that.”

“Come up here.” Eames sounds pleasantly winded. “Would you?”

Arthur rises from his knees, using Eames’ body to pull himself up and relishing the contact against thighs, pelvis, chest. When he can reach, he curls Eames in by his nape and kisses him soundly, because Eames doesn’t have to say what he’s after anymore. That ship sailed over two years ago. Arthur might even say that ship cruised, and nearly loses the kiss to an honest-to-god snicker. But Eames’ left hand climbs and catches at Arthur’s, sobers him right up, so Arthur reverses, threads their fingers together and presses Eames’ arm against the wall over his head.

When the kiss breaks, Eames only takes the time to inhale.

“You know what this means, darling.” Arthur _loves_ his voice like this, oxygen-deprived and guttural-low. The dissonance is that it actually gets softer this way. Taxed and shaky and staggeringly intimate. “I want months. One long trip that, ah,” as Arthur sinks back to his knees and pops two buttons in quick succession, “that we can enjoy. Properly. And no tourist shit, either, we’re just going to _be.”_

“For months?” Arthur draws down the waistband of Eames’ briefs enough to nose at the skin right where it gets supple and ticklish. Eames’ stomach jumps. He smells warm and aroused, the kind of arousal that has been coiling up for a long, long while.

“Fucking long as we can stand,” Eames grates. His right hand weaves through Arthur’s hair and begins a steady flex and rub over his scalp. “God, darling. You’re beautiful.”

Arthur could say the same, if he wasn’t an inch away from Eames’ length and keeping a very precise distance as he bares it slowly to the air. He’s going to take his time about that, too, hasn’t even uncovered anything substantial yet, and already Eames’ hand trembles in his hair. Arthur slides his palms low around Eames’ belly, starting where his fly parts and moving under fabric to cup the indentations above his thighs. Eames shudders as Arthur’s fingers press into the hollows at the joint of torso and leg.

Eames clears his throat. “California. Bloody states shouldn’t be larger than countries.” His voice sounds further away. Arthur knows he’s looking up at the ceiling, probably not seeing it, but looking, looking. “You show me how the ocean’s really done. I want to see your Big Sur.”

“Nah, we don’t have any castles here, Eames.” Arthur loses part of it nuzzling into the hair trailing from Eames’ stomach. “I want castles. Old, decrepit things. Rocks and moss. Blown out towers. Hell of a lot of history.” He sucks a brazen mark at Eames’ thigh, and Eames’ fingers clench tight.

“You’ve got a castle,” Eames manages. “In San Simeon, I’ve seen pictures.”

“You see the pool?”

The way Eames catches his eye, looks down at him and goes completely still, Arthur _knows_ he’s seen the pool. “Darling,” Eames rasps slowly, and Arthur yanks his fly the rest of the way open without breaking their gazes.

Eames’ head thunks back to the wall. He slumps a little, hips settling lower down, and lets out a helpless grunt as Arthur works his hands around back, resituating the lay of his pants until everything’s open, until Arthur’s had his palms all the way over Eames’ ass and back. He likes Eames mostly clothed like this, likes the way Eames stares down at him like he’s thinking about tackling him to the floor, likes the way Eames rocks into it without even seeming to realize he’s moving. Likes the way Eames breathes wholly through his nose, lips tightly shut and the vein in his jaw tensing again and again.

God, if only he could do this and kiss that mouth at the same time. He thinks Eames would break, and duly so. Arthur would like to see that.

Shit. He’s got time. He’s got all the time in the world, now. It’s overpowering.

He gets Eames out of his pants at last, breathes up the side of him, and Eames arches away from the wall at the hips only, as if he can’t keep it back. And he’s trying, because Eames has never just taken from Arthur like that, though he could, easily. What Eames gets off on, Arthur has come to understand, is Arthur’s allowance, Arthur’s assent. Arthur’s endorsement, in everything from a touch to a rough and thorough fucking. It makes Arthur wonder just how stingy he’s being with his affection on a day to day basis, to transform it into such a sought after commodity. Hell, if Eames really knew all the things Arthur would let him get away with when it comes to sex—

Time enough to start showing him those, too. It makes Arthur giddy.

“We’re swimming in that pool,” he breathes. Takes Eames into his mouth and slides back off again. “You. And me. And nobody else. At twilight, when the statues turn all blue and the water lights up from beneath and—”

Eames locks Arthur’s hair in a fist and thrusts forward, and Arthur takes him in again, sucks hard, relaxes his throat and swallows. Eames’ voice breaks on a word. Arthur reaches up, finds Eames’ left hand again and twines their fingers into a tight fist, tight enough to hurt. He presses Eames’ hand back against the wall and sets to work, gone over the ripple of Eames’ muscles. Eames moves like he’s gone as well, a steady roll, locked into being until the end is finally reached. Arthur pulls off, tongues the tip, sucks him back down, works his fingers behind Eames’ balls, and stays there as Eames breaks rhythm, tries to hold himself still in one last bid for longevity. 

Arthur lets him. He wants this to last for-fucking-ever, wants Eames to not come and not come, and finally, when he does, go so hard he loses himself, folds down at every joint, and Arthur has to catch _him_ for once. And then lay him out and torture it out of him again, tell him what all the best, most well-considered words can never articulate, because he’s desperate that Eames know.

It thuds unevenly in Arthur’s chest. Eames _has_ to know.

“Arthur,” Eames manages, broken to all hell. Arthur’s fingers hurt, he’s clenching Eames’ hand so hard, but they haven’t gone numb yet, he can still feel the new addition there, right where—

“We’re taking the Seoul job,” he grinds out, because he wants them all to see that new addition next week, see what he can feel, metallic and slender and unforgiving against his own fingers. Eames blinks, and Arthur slides a hand around behind, clenches the back of Eames’ waistband. “We’re fucking taking it.” And pulls Eames forward, into his mouth again.

By the time Eames starts to come, his hand has drifted to Arthur’s face, fingers heady points against the side of his neck, thumb rubbing beneath his left eye. And it’s still nearly half a minute of quiet, of Eames’ steady in-out, in-out through his nose, of Arthur’s hand skating higher and lower, of Eames _watching_ him, eyes fogging, pupils blowing even wider. Arthur has no idea what he looks like to Eames, but it must be something to behold, because Eames lets out this tiny, devastated sound right before his eyes snap shut and his jaw ticks up and his throat bobs, and he comes hard down Arthur’s throat.

Arthur sucks him through it, takes his time because Eames is incredible when he’s coming, like he’s getting hit over and over again by swells of it, coasting along on the down slope, and god, Arthur wants to come like that. He’s pretty sure he has, under Eames’ meticulous ministrations, but it never, ever gets old, watching it unfold before his eyes and knowing that he brought it into being.

Eames fucking _shakes_ when he’s done. His limbs shake, his breath shakes from his throat, everything shakes. Arthur presses him back against the wall, mostly to hold him up. Partly to pull himself back because he knows—

Eames hauls him to his feet before the thought is finished, and they almost tip over, they, they _do_ tip over, Arthur shoots a hand out to grab something, to— but he lands on soft bedding instead, and Eames crawls up over him, yanking at his waistcoat, then his shirt and suspenders. He bares a good swath of Arthur’s chest and sets to, and Arthur shouts, body already overly sensitized, good god, and Eames maneuvers his pants open with the dexterity of a pickpocket and thrusts his hand down in and cups around him and kneads him, fucking— kneads— him—

Arthur reaches for Eames, and Eames grabs his hand, slams it back down on the bed, locks their fingers together and fucks Arthur hard without ever even entering his body. It’s— it’s something Arthur hadn’t experienced before Eames, that he could feel so thoroughly taken apart, that his body could be moved so much, that this could open him in ways he never expected, and the first time Eames did it, Arthur ended up so thrashed inside, so fucking lost that he walked out on Eames for two whole days because it was too much, it was slightly horrifying, it was the gothic definition of sublime. Eames cants into him fiercely, bites at his throat, and then he kisses him, damnfuck, _“Eames,”_ Arthur moans, over and over until it’s just a sound, and then he’s done, he’s just fucking done. The end. 

“You alright?” Eames whispers against his mouth. He means it. He knows what he does to Arthur. He’ll probably always be afraid that Arthur will break again, when they make love like this.

Arthur whimpers and thrusts his chin up into a kiss, and Eames gives it to him readily until Arthur can pull himself back to rights.

Like so many times recently, he finds he doesn’t want to. At all. So he doesn’t, just lets the kiss go on and on until it’s become about sex all over again and then abruptly fallen away from it, back to being about them. Mouths. Eames, and the taste of their tongues together.

The light has changed by the time Arthur comes out of it. His mouth hurts, and his jaw, the insides of his knees where they squeezed around Eames’ hipbones. His clothing is a damned mess, crumpled into irreconcilable bunches, covered with sweat and come, pulled so far askew that Arthur wants to laugh. He thinks it looks good. Eames’ clothing looks especially good yanked half off him like that, he’s so damn fucking _perfect._ He should never be clothed or unclothed. Just always in between, like someone’s just had his way with him.

Arthur grins, full out.

He finds Eames’ left hand again, settled on the mattress next to Arthur’s, and raises it before his eyes. Studies the silver band now gracing Eames’ ring finger, the tasteful hatches in the metal all the way along its surface and the way it curves around Eames’ finger like it’s always been there.

“I like how it looks,” Eames murmurs, practically voicing Arthur’s thoughts. “Think its twin’ll look even better on you.”

**

(“Feel much different then?” Eames braces above Arthur an hour later, nose inches from his and a smile on his kiss-reddened mouth.

“What?”

“Sex with your fiancé.” He leans over Arthur to turn off the lamp, and they shuffle around, careful with their sore muscles. Arthur turns onto his side to let Eames shift back down, nosing into the expanse of skin as it passes.

“Yes.” He gets hold of Eames at last, manhandles him until he has Eames tucked up against his body, and shuts his eyes. “You smell like _mine.”_

Eames is quiet for a moment. His throat ripples beneath Arthur’s chin, a shivery flutter, and then Arthur feels the brush of lips over his eyebrow. “For longer than you know, darling.”)

~fin~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Concerning part 3: It was brought to my attention that Arthur is quite aware that Eames is in Mombasa in the movie, when Dom says he's going to get them a forger. Likewise, as has been pointed out to me, fandom!Arthur is pretty much aware of everything concerning his dreamshare compatriots. He makes it his business and it's why he's successful. But I thought, hey... what if Arthur had a very specific reason as to why he knows that Eames was in Mombasa at that particular time? Thus, part 3 was born. I'm also a big fan of the fandom idea that Eames has manipulated his way into the Fischer job, sometimes even setting things up so that he is the one Cobb asks to forge. What a lovely little schemer we have!
> 
> Anyway, just babbling...
> 
> ALSO ALSO ALSO: [This is the pool Arthur and Eames are discussing](http://www.roadcarvin.com/sites/default/files/images/HC%20Pool%201731_IMG.JPG), also known as [the Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle](http://floridapools.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/NeptunePool.jpg). And yes, you can swim in it, if you have money. Or a parent who works for the California State Parks system. *cackle*


	4. In Equal Fault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They found Eames because he came out of the woodwork. Five months ago, he dropped his layers in order to drag Arthur out of a grimy bathroom._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place almost half a year after **PART 2** in “Three times Eames came for Arthur and one time Eames… yeah” (aka, UnDays ch. 3). I know, I know. Confusing. **[Please see the brand new Day Series Chapter Rubric!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/862369)**
> 
> Meanwhile, suffice it to say Eames recently pulled Arthur out of a bad situation that involved torture. Pre-marriage, pre-relationship. **Warnings: past Eames/OFC, talk of nasty off-screen murder methods, and Arthur swearing. Again.** Guest-starring Dom! And Mal! And James, sort of! And Belle! And Another Original Character!
> 
> Thank you so much to snottygrrl for betaing and to coffeejunkii for listening to me blabber about boys in denial. Always, always good times. ^_^

Eames dies in Mississippi on a Tuesday.

Arthur spends Wednesday ravaging his contact grid, ripping apart sites and hacking information out of protected databases.

He spends Thursday through Saturday so drunk he can’t see. An entire two minutes of that time is a haze of the most bone-grinding threats he knows, shouted—slurred into Eames’ voicemail. He tells himself (and Eames) that it’s because of the utter waste, the loss of pure, frightening, unmatchable talent.

On Sunday, he gets out of bed and begins researching again.

He finds Eames’ killer by two in the afternoon. It’s not exactly a feat. Not many tracks have been covered. And it’s this passive sort of gloating that gets to Arthur, that sends him out into an alleyway two cities over to get his hands on some truly rare ammunition and the rarer weapon that fires it.

He hasn’t touched one since the army, but the scope fits right up into his palm again when he runs his fingers over it, the stock and barrel a familiar weight. The butt settles cozily against the inside of his shoulder, the trigger molds to the pad of his fingertip, and the gun runner’s eyes get a little wide when Arthur loads, cocks, disarms and then dismantles the weapon right in front of him.

“Know your way around it, huh?” the man says. Arthur glances at him once with eyes mostly closed. He still has a hangover.

“It knows its way around me.”

It’s more a symbiotic relationship. Arthur cleaves to this gun with a readiness that shocked him when he first put his hands on one. It behaved like a dream for him, and he for it, and he kept it in perfect working order, kept it oiled and clean. Kept waiting for the catch, the moment when he figured out he’d been using it wrong. But this rifle? Has never let him down.

**

“You’re doing what?”

Arthur sighs and snaps the gun case closed. He tosses the rest of his socks into his suitcase. “Dom.”

“No, this one’s for Mal, she’s standing right here.” Dom’s voice goes muddled, drawn away from the phone. Arthur can hear Mal’s higher tones, much less incredulous and more on their way to frenzied.

“Do _not_ put her on.”

“—ell him to wait, wait for us, he can’t do this by himself!” she says, probably hanging on to Dom’s shoulder as she scrambles for the phone.

Arthur grips his cell so tightly his fingers hurt. _“Dom.”_

His own tone surprises him, and it must surprise them, too, because all noise on the other end ceases. Arthur takes a shaky breath. “You do not come here. She does not come.” Mal is pregnant again, the news a mere two weeks old. “You stay with your family and you leave this alone.”

“Arthur.” It’s all Dom says, but Arthur can suddenly hear worlds in it, knowledge and wisdom and grief on his behalf, and he wants _none_ of it.

“Dom,” he tries, and has to put a hand out, catch himself on the dresser. “If you, if any of—Anyone got killed like that. I’d do this.”

This time Dom doesn’t say anything. Arthur goes back to packing, zipping. Moving around the room with his friend breathing in his ear.

Finally— “You have to let her help. At least. Something.”

“I’m letting her stay out of it.” Arthur hangs up the phone.

**

The last thing he does before leaving town is fill up his car on the edge of his neighborhood. It’ll take him a little while to get out of San Francisco at this time of day, but he’s agitated enough to drive all night and he fully intends to make use of the energy.

Five days by car. The only thing keeping him from being there in five hours is the rifle neatly locked away in the footwell of the passenger seat. He doesn’t have the time to wrestle it through any kind of security except border patrol. His phone rattles in the cup holder and he ignores it, pulling in to the pump fast enough to screech out tread marks. He twists off the gas cap, contemplating whether or not to pick up a train once he’s in New Mexico. He sticks cash in to fill the tank, pumps the gas, then goes inside to buy something to eat when it’s pitch black and he’s the only one on the road.

The guy stocking sodas is from the neighborhood: tall and dark, with lean runner’s muscles and a jaw line Arthur could sink his teeth into, fingers that could reach right up inside him, shoulder blades he’s imagined pressing his forehead against while he drives in hard. The guy smiles in recognition and comes closer, eyes taking on a very specific heat, and Arthur had considered— He’d spent some time considering it, he’d damn well needed _something_ after this shitstorm of a year, played and betrayed and shaken into pieces, waiting for his hands to heal enough that he could make his own fucking pot of coffee, finally being able to breathe again without imagining his ribs knocking together like a wind chime—

And no. No. This, everything, all seems so beside the point now. The very thought of what could result from this guy’s smile just makes Arthur tired.

Angry.

He pays for the food and water without a word, and when the guy’s fingers inch closer, Arthur moves his hand and stares him down stone-faced until his receipt spools out. The guy glances away, unsure, then looks back, and this time Arthur doesn’t bother to acknowledge it. He pockets his wallet and leaves.

It infuriates him. _Infuriates._ He cannot fucking get over it. It’s like a rock in his shoe, shredding the tender arch of his foot with every step, and no matter how he shakes his leg, he can’t dislodge it, tip it to the side where it still rubs but at least doesn’t cut deeper and deeper.

And of course it doesn’t feel like it’s in his foot at all.

He’s so mad at Eames he feels like if he saw him in the street, he’d up and shoot him in the face, and get carted off to prison and not care about any of it. Eames, who was more careful than anyone gave him credit for, who slipped and slid through all grips, not just those out to wring him to death. Eames, who could have given Arthur a _major_ headache trying to pin him down if he’d ever decided to be difficult. Eames got snapped flat and shot in the back, figuratively.

The way they really killed him is a lot less clean.

**

It comes to him slowly as he’s crossing into Arizona, his mind crossing a border of its own. Arthur pulls the car to a stop on the shoulder and sits with the dome light on, chewing his lip until it stings.

They found Eames because he came out of the woodwork. Five months ago, he dropped his layers in order to drag Arthur out of a grimy bathroom.

**

Meridian’s hot, the air as close as a steam room’s. Arthur shucks his jacket in the car, then takes off his dress shirt, too. Most people here are walking around in tanks or undershirts, and the sun sears down on Arthur’s bare shoulders as he climbs out of the car. He checks into the hotel off an old main drag whose flare has been usurped by the freeway. There’s a diner and a café down the street, a sandwich shop further along, and the ever-present Starbucks mermaid in sight across a row of spiky oleander.

Arthur locks the door, shoves his stuff into the closet, and crawls onto the bed. He sleeps for the next twelve hours.

**

Naya Lefrere sells him an address as promised, then leaves the city. The place turns out to be a crappy casino with off-color ale and bourbon that could peel flesh. There’s a high-roller in attendance, but Arthur can’t take him seriously: his stakes are much smaller than anyone with such an extravagant suit has a right to claim.

Eames would have fleeced this man for his money, his cat, and his foreign wife, and made him slaver after every second of it.

Luckily for this guy, Eames never did any of these things, and so Arthur trains nothing but an eye on that end of the room, and waits.

The banger shows up just in time for happy hour and chats up the bartender until she tells him to wait for her at home, damn it, and feed the dog. When the guy leaves, after two minutes of acting like he hasn’t just had his dick squeezed to half its size in front of everyone, Arthur follows him out. The guy hits up a few more bars, drops in on a questionable meeting in an alleyway to posture for half an hour, then tries halfheartedly to boost a car with a keypad lock. Arthur waits till he’s done fucking around—kid’s capable but bored, it’s plain on his face—and trails him to a nice looking art deco replica in a well-to-do neighborhood. Which wouldn’t be obvious at all except for the motley crew of junker vehicles lounging in the driveway.

Arthur counts armory, studies faces, predicts at least two drug deals being scheduled for later on in less elitist surroundings, and finally spots his real target passing briefly in front of a window on the east side of the house.

He scouts out a perch three mansions down amidst the ornamental maze of thin chimneys, checks the line of sight to driveway, backyard, and drawing room along the edge of his hand, and goes back to his hotel for the night.

**

A hunter studies his prey. This is true for all apex predators: a careful stalking from the long grass, a gentle twining round the limb above, a silent circle from high in the sky. Eliminating as many variables as possible, tamping down those that can’t be done away with completely. Factoring unpredictability like a marketable commodity. When the hunt is for another predator, precautions rank up there with claws and night vision and bullets, as precious as gold and worth hoarding. 

On the third day, Arthur frowns.

Eames must have let them get close, there’s no other explanation. This guy is an arrogant idiot, far too flashy to hide from anyone, and not nearly patient enough to outlast Eames. Arthur knows how hard that is. He’s tried, and it’s enough to drive him far closer to premeditated homicide than he’s ever been.

Or. It was.

Arthur clamps onto the anger that bursts afresh, chews it down to a paste that coats his insides and oils all the hinges, because he’s not entirely sure it _is_ anger anymore. There’s something slick and hot about it, eating away beneath the surface until his ribs feel like they’re spreading, creaking outward. 

He feels like he’s lost his best friend. And for what? _To_ what? This ignominious jackass who hasn’t been picked off yet simply because, to anyone with sense, he’s worth more as a distraction than as a tool? Eames would _use_ this guy, cajole him right out of his Barker Blacks and make him think it was his idea.

Something is not right about this.

It’s almost an insult to level the scope of this gun at the guy’s head, but Arthur keeps him in his sights for a far longer time than necessary, following as the man laughs into his phone, the crosshairs meeting right in between his brows.

In the end, he doesn’t squeeze the trigger. He brings the rifle back down and stares hard at the tiny target pacing the patio below, and thinks.

**

Eames was killed in this city, and from what Arthur could tell from the weeks before it happened, he’d been here long term. Naya wouldn’t say anything about the job itself, but Arthur knows she was on it. It’s her saving grace that Arthur also knows she’s a decent person, despite the emotionless façade she maintains for the masses. 

And he didn’t come to this conclusion through any sympathetic sense of regard, either. He looked her up. Oh, he kept _her_ right at the top of the list until he couldn’t anymore.

But now she’s gone, out of his way, leaving behind a handful of places rented or purchased under names that ping a familiar chime on Arthur’s radar. The next step is to go back to the beginning and track forward from there to the end. At one point, Eames was basically living here, and it’ll have been in one of these places.

He rules out three, all empty, before he reaches the fourth and just _knows._

Arthur opens the front door of an apartment in a sketchy neighborhood in a record ten seconds, and creeps into a dim hallway. The alarm system on the wall is dormant, not even hooked in, by the look of the keypad. There’s a TV on somewhere, but the air is cool and conditioned, a fresh burst after the sweltering hallway. Arthur wipes sweaty palms one by one on his pant legs and rises into a hunch, skirting the wall until the living area comes up on his right. He’s never been inside any of Eames’ homes, if he had them, but this place feels like Eames has just walked through it, tapped the frame of a favorite painting on his way to the kitchen, tossed his jacket over the door without hanging it up. Filled the fridge with his choice of groceries and drunk from tumblers that he personally selected from a store shelf. 

The knowledge that someone might be here, sitting in the remnants of Eames’ life like he or she owns it, makes Arthur’s trigger finger ache.

Fucking scavengers.

He takes the safety off the Sig and halts flush with the entrance to the living room, trying to judge the show that’s playing. There’s no pattern to it, the sound down just a smidge too low. So much for covering noise. Something crinkles in the room, like plastic, and Arthur hears movement. A body shifting on a soft surface.

The TV’s against the same wall as the door, but that’s no guarantee of where the intruder will be facing. Arthur counts to a random seven and spins, drops low, levels the gun on the person’s forehead. There’s a jump and a clatter, the remote skipping off of wood, a sharp inhalation, and everything freezes. All of Arthur’s air pushes out in an abrupt rush, and he almost loses his balance.

It’s Eames, in the armchair directly across from the doorway with his hand in a bag of kale chips.

“Arthur?”

He sounds baffled. For some reason, that specifically strikes Arthur as frightening. He lowers the gun a little, jumps it up again and glances down the rest of the hall toward the kitchen, then lowers it for good. If someone’s here and Eames is covering for them so they can shoot Arthur in the back— well, his mind is being a complete toddler about computing that in any form. He straightens to his full height, and moves forward carefully. “Do you know who I am?”

Eames’ face screws up. “Yes?”

Which, fuck, of course he does, he just named Arthur right there from his chair. Arthur swears, irritation gaining its first foothold. “Are you alright?” he tries instead, and waves a hand to encompass all of Eames’ body from his feet to his head. He’s—still not sure he’s really seeing this, what he’s supposed to make of it. It feels like it should be clear cut but his brain is just not catching, swaying away from the edges like a tongue of flame. “They give you something? Black you out?”

Eames glances at the TV, mouth arrested in an opened state, then flicks his eyes to Arthur again. He holds up a hand and gestures hesitantly to his pocket. Arthur nods, and waits while Eames takes out his totem and settles one question, at least. Only he doesn’t look surprised at all, just moues his mouth and slides it back into his pocket when he’s done. Looks at Arthur expectantly.

Arthur reaches into his own pocket, palms the die for long enough to convince himself all over again, then lifts his chin at Eames. Eames nods back. And then they just stand there. Or Arthur stands and Eames sits, drumming his fingers against the arms of the chair.

“What are you doing here?” Eames ventures at last.

“Being fucking shocked, apparently.” He almost spits it out, and Eames’ eyebrows climb. Arthur attempts to pull his tone back into the range of calm. “Listen, you need to pick a new safe house. This isn’t a walk in the park to find, but—” He waves at himself this time. Eames’ eyes follow his hand then return to his face.

“Alright.” Like he’s waiting for something else. Or worse, humoring Arthur. Arthur takes himself back another notch and looks down the checklist of their present interaction, trying to spot something obvious he’s missed.

“Someone looking for me, then?” Eames asks, and Arthur stares at him, incredulous.

 _“No,_ they’re mostly not, because you’re—” The words stop in his mouth. He feels every inch of the next breath he draws, a tendril of epiphany uncurling from the ether as if a thin fog is sucking away from it. He scratches his fingernail along the trigger guard of his gun, up and down, up and down. The tendril becomes fact. “Alive.”

Eames continues to look at him, not nearly curious enough. “I am that.”

Arthur gestures at Eames with the gun, then puts it down on the coffee table and sits on the couch. Squints at the wall. Gets up again and approaches Eames’ chair, one hand extended.

Eames frowns up at him, and Arthur punches him in the face.

**

Five minutes later, he’s on the couch again, fingers stiffening with blood he staunched from Eames’ nose. Eames has commandeered the towel now and holds it bunched against his nostrils with one hand. They both have a dreadfully rusty gin rolling around their mouths.

Arthur drinks the last of his and sets his tumbler down, then turns and reaches for a clean towel, folded on the coffee table. “Here.”

Eames relinquishes the old one silently and Arthur cups the base of his skull to tilt his face up a little. He presses the new towel carefully into place, and Eames hisses.

“Not sorry,” Arthur says, settling into place to keep the pressure on.

“Alright.” Eames’ voice is hollow and flat with his nose plugged up like this. The iron smell is there, but diluted, though Eames’ shirt bears more than a few red splotches. Arthur notices for the first time that Eames is barefoot, that there’s a set of slippers lying next to his chair. The TV is still on, mumbling in the background in a language Arthur isn’t fluent in.

“You want ice?”

Eames shakes his head, then winces, and Arthur drops the hand still cupping his nape. Eames’ eyes follow him, a subdued sort of study. Arthur _is_ sorry he punched Eames. And he’s not. He’s sorry he has to stare at blood that he’d thought would never be shed again. He’s sorry he’s still sitting here trying to gather the pieces of his reality when it tipped off the edge and dashed itself against the ground. For the second time in two weeks.

“Who the hell got his throat cut, then?”

It’s abrupt enough to make Eames flinch again, and then he settles back with a sigh. The new towel is getting damp. “Some wannabe architect who couldn’t keep his hands out of everyone’s pants.” Arthur stares at him, and Eames clears his throat. “Figuratively. Took money from the client’s accounts, sloppily, I might add, and borrowed my alias as insurance.”

“He framed you.”

“Tried, darling. He tried.” Eames adjusts the towel, tucking in a corner that has fallen loose. “If he’d just waited a day, he wouldn’t have had to frame me. Then again, he wouldn’t have the money either, so.”

Arthur nods once, slow. “Good plan, Eames.”

Eames drops the towel, leaving smeared pink around an incredulous frown. “Oh, piss off, Arthur, you know they’d never have caught _me.”_

At this exact moment, Arthur will admit to nothing. Eames takes a tentative, clogged breath through his nose, and Arthur urges the towel back into place. “So, what, they mistook him for you and hired a hit?” And bled him out slowly on the floor of a dirty warehouse, according to Naya. But Arthur’s still feeling the unsavory ramifications of envisioning Eames there in the dirt. He doesn’t want to talk about it. “No. Too many holes, Eames.”

Eames glares at him, exasperated. “You think I gave them my name? Good lord, Arthur, you must have a low opinion of me. I didn’t even know who they were, never met them. The only one who saw me was Naya Lefrere. It was her job, she did all the negotiating.”

It still doesn’t explain everything. “And Naya, what? Is in on it?”

This time Eames hedges. “No. But she does think I’m dead.”

“Fuck’s sake.” Arthur grabs Eames’ tumbler off the table and slugs back the rest of its contents. “She took their word.”

“In her defense, I don’t think the body was in much of a condition for confirming identity once they were satisfied.”

Paintings, coat hooks, even the damn smell. “This isn’t a safe house, Eames.”

“No,” Eames answers levelly. “It’s not.”

Arthur lets it go. “So why didn’t you leave town once you were so conveniently deceased?”

“Couldn’t be sure my IDs wouldn’t tip them off. They’re bloody naff, but not all of them are stupid. Besides, as you so succinctly put it, it presented a convenient solution to a nagging problem.”

“Another one?”

Eames waves him off. “Belle.”

Arthur’s left thumb spasms, like it does when he desperately needs a gun in hand and he doesn’t have one. He doesn’t like Belle. She’s dangerous, a seriously liability except in very specific situations where subtlety is low on the list. He knows Eames is sleeping with her, and it curls in his guts how unwise an idea that is, how Eames should fucking know better. 

Choose better.

“Yeah,” he grits out, and tries to be thankful on some level for the help she provided when he was tied to a chair, half out of his mind with pain. “No one saw that coming.”

Eames snorts, a fragile sound. Any harder, he’ll tear a clot, and Arthur will have to go look for more towels. White ones, he decides. That will never, ever come clean. 

Instead, he jabs Eames right in the tender nerve behind his elbow, digs his thumb in swift and sharp. “You don’t think there was _someone_ you might have told?”

Eames rubs his elbow fiercely with his free hand, flicking his eyes to Arthur and away again. “Alright, so maybe I made a mistake with you.”

 _“Maybe._ You know Mal is sitting at home going spare? Pregnant, Eames. You could be single-handedly responsible for a miscarriage.”

Behind the curve of his knuckles, Eames rolls his eyes. “Dramatics don’t suit you as well as they do me, Arthur.”

That’s abundantly clear. Arthur turns away, feeling bitten somewhere vital. It’s like coming up to a clubhouse door, pushing on it, and finding it barred where it had never been.

Or maybe that was his fucking mistake. “Maybe next time you’ll just avoid the drama altogether and ask for help. I’ve been told I’m fairly effective in this kind of situation.”

Eames wipes his nose with tentative fingertips. “You don’t need Belle in your life.”

“And you do?”

“She’s in my life whether I want it or not!” Eames sounds more stymied than mad. “She does _not_ need to be in yours.” 

That last part’s fervent, more so than expected. At least it doesn’t sound as if Eames has had Belle as a bedmate lately. Small favors.

“Sometimes I hate the way you operate, Mr. Eames.”

“Excuse me if I have certain issues” —issss-yous— “that I’d just as soon be rid of when the opportunity presents itself. We can’t all be as meticulous as the greatest point who ever pointed.”

“You know she’s just going to figure it out eventually.”

“Ah.” Eames takes the cloth from his nose with some finality and rolls it between his fingers. “Belle doesn’t know the name Eames either.”

How the fuck had he managed that? “Isn’t that disturbing, having her shout out an alias in the midst of your tender ministrations?” What? He’s feeling bitter.

Eames raises an eyebrow. “Lesser of two evils. She is a bit insane.”

Arthur sighs, grabs the towel on the table and chucks it into the trash basket by the television. “When she comes after you, and she will, you better hope I have a clear schedule.”

“You came after me.”

He can’t exactly deny it, but god, that tone is searching, scraping him in strange ways.

“Darling.” Eames’ smile is still a little pink, but his teeth are clean and white. “Are you invested, then?”

Arthur fixes him with a long look, and Eames _tch_ es and drops his eyes. “Alright, yes. In pari delicto.”

They sit quietly, Eames holding the bloody towel and Arthur with his hands curled over his knees. In the kitchen, the refrigerator kicks on with a worrisome thumping.

And then Eames smirks again. “Just so you know, Arthur, the sentiment is greatly, grandly, exorbitantly appreci—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, clean your damn face.”

~fin~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **"In pari delicto" or "in equal fault."


	5. Of Imaginings a Bower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Of Imaginings a Bower" takes place after the movie in the timeline. I'm sorry, Arthur's not in it much. Sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title comes from a quote by Khalil Gibran. The entire (beautiful!) passage can be found [here](http://www.katsandogz.com/onhouses.html).
> 
> Thank you so much to coffeejunkii for brainstorming and to dysonrules for betaing! (Thanks also to snottygrrl for attempting to beta, even though RL ended up getting in the way. I wuv you.)

Ariadne’s calves ache, her head is spinning, she’s huffing like she has asthma, and the door out of the stairwell is _heavy._ Below her, boots squeak and thump up the stairs, and someone barks out an order. She shoves out onto the sixth floor, and the door tries to snap up her pack as it slams shut. The hall stretches empty and for a horrible second, she forgets the apartment number.

The next second, it clicks back into place and Ariadne pushes off the wall, running as fast as she can after that climb. When she reaches 617, she skids to stop, nearly smacking into the door as she dumps her pack on the ground and starts knocking. She can admit, she might be cutting it a little close.

“Arthur, Arthur, _please_ be there, if you’re there, I need you to open up right now!” It’s no use, knowing she can’t push through the wall; her body is fast becoming its own creature, simply reacting. Panicking. There’s no time to pick the lock, and she’s not sure she’d remember how anyway. She hugs the door frame, pressed as close as she can get. It doesn’t stop the lighted numbers from ticking up on the elevator at the end of the hall. She looks back the way she came, at the stairwell door, but they’ll be there, too, any minute, and that’s when that glorious click sounds, the best, most universal noise she’s ever heard, and the apartment door swings inward.

Ariadne stares. The person on the other side of the threshold stares back.

“Eames?”

“Ariadne?”

“I, uh, isn’t this Arthur’s place?” Her brain goes ridiculously blank, the needle paused and jumping over the same scratch in the record’s surface. She didn’t get it wrong, did she? Except she doesn’t know where Eames lives, doesn’t know if he even has a place, so how could she have mixed them up?

Eames’ eyes skip down her front and up again, taking in her stance and her bag, and his brows knit. “It is.”

She doesn’t know what to say, really, except then the hall echoes with thumps from the stairs and the elevator dings, and Eames grabs her by the arm and pulls her inside. He shuts the door and hustles her down the hall with both hands on her shoulders. Ariadne trips forward, going where she’s pushed and just thankful she hasn’t fallen yet. Eventually the hall opens up into a living room, and Eames comes around, takes her wrist, and keeps going. There’s another hall jutting to the left, the kitchen to the right. Eames pulls her past the latter, throws open the door of what turns out to be the pantry, and—

“Oh.”

Eames has hauled a big burlap sack of rice out of the way and popped open the damn _wall._ He wastes no time tossing her bag in and then urging her to her knees. Ariadne scrambles inside and turns in the surprisingly large space to stare back through the opening where Eames crouches.

“Just sit tight, love.” Eames flashes her a toothy smile and shuts the panel in her face.

Ariadne hugs her knees and sits tight.

She listens as banging starts up at the front door, as burlap slides and hinges creak, and then eventually the front door opens and there’s a lot of confusing noise. People converse, but too low to catch the words, no matter how hard she strains. Eventually she makes out Eames, louder than the others. Except the accent is all wrong.

“Oh my god. How dangerous is she?” He sounds Midwestern, for crying out loud. “Well, I used to hear the door to the stairs whenever it opened, thin walls, you know. But I guess it’s white noise to me now, so... Oh, sure. Yeah, come in, have at it.”

They search and they search, and they walk and talk, Eames oohs and ahhs. The pantry door opens once and things get shifted around. Ariadne nearly bites through her tongue as Eames points out all the things he’s been experimenting with and oh, did they want to stay for dinner? He’s trying a new gluten-free pasta thing with kale and squash and lima beans. The pantry shuts. A while later, the front door shuts as well, and eventually Eames pulls the panel open again and leans over to smirk at her.

“Up you come.” He extends a hand. She takes it and gets to her feet.

The apartment is once again quiet, and Eames pads back down the hall toward the living room barefoot, as if no one else was ever there. Ariadne follows, clutching her shoulder bag in front of her. Her coat’s getting pretty hot; she manages to get it off without dropping anything, and by the time she’s done, Eames has returned from the kitchen with a clinking glass of ice water.

“Thanks.” She drags it to her mouth with both hands and swallows down the lot of it. Eames takes it from her and replaces it with another that she never even saw. “Oh.” She wipes her mouth. “Thanks.”

“Ariadne, you _look_ dehydrated.” The corner of his mouth shivers downward. “Not a good thing.”

“Been a long month,” she mutters. It has been. Very long, and very lonely, and not nearly as rewarding as she’d hoped. Never mind the money. The work, the job just… wasn’t fulfilling, and it had taken her way too long to figure out why.

It’s not surprising that Eames doesn’t ask about her month. Or her eight months since the last time they saw each other either. Ariadne finds she’s way too exhausted and sick of life in general to talk about it right now anyway. Instead, Eames just gestures to one of the comfy-looking chairs around the coffee table and waits till she sits down to take one of his own.

“As fine a surprise as this is,” he says, once she’s finished most of the second glass as well and started to feel a little awkward, “care to tell me if I’ll be turning strange men away all night?”

It comes to her slowly that she never really thought Eames would turn her in, and now she’s wondering why he hasn’t, and why she didn’t consider that outcome sooner, and it’s making it hard to breathe. God, she’s not a career criminal. She’s lucky about who she’s fallen in with. Because now she just feels stupid for having doubted him in the first place, even if it came a little belatedly. A _hole_ in the _wall?_ Shit.

She sets the glass down before she can drop it and curls low over her lap, pressing the heels of her hands to her head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, thank you for not, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t even—”

A hand slides around her forearm and rests there heavily enough for the heat to bleed through her sleeve. “Steady on,” Eames murmurs, quite close. Ariadne hitches her lungs back under control, and after a moment, right after the moment she gets herself back together, in fact, Eames’ hand lifts away.

She looks up to find him smiling tolerantly at her, as if he can read everything that just sailed through her mind. “You’re safe here, Ariadne. And no apologies, I give points for suspicion.” 

Where exactly _is_ here? She looks around, but immediately she knows she was right: it is Arthur’s, from the paint job right down to the footstool that matches her armchair. She’s sure she’ll just see more of him in the hallways, the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedrooms, and then her mind trips ahead of her and she starts looking for things that aren’t Arthur’s.

And she sees them. It’s subtle, not part of the original design, but it’s there. A jacket that’s too big for Arthur over one of the kitchen chairs; she can see it through the doorway. A woolen blanket kicked aside, half off the couch like someone just got up from a nap. A couple pictures on the wall that she hadn’t paid attention to at first, but with every passing second, they stand out more and more. Paperbacks on the table in front of her, a mug with a tea strainer next to it, shoes she recognizes in the hallway, and not because Arthur wore them.

“Is Arthur… here?”

“Out of the country till next week.”

The place is _lived in._ Not that Arthur wouldn’t live in his own home—he can’t possibly just crawl out of shrink wrap in the mornings, dusting off his lovely blazers and button-downs—but there’s something here, right now, that definitely isn’t him. It slinks in around her and tightens up until that tiny, free flare she’s been halfheartedly cultivating for longer than she’s willing to admit gutters.

“Can I use the bathroom?” Because Ariadne knows homes. And if she doesn’t know people as well as Eames does, she knows enough to get by. She may be young, thanks, but her focus in life has made her observant.

On the side of the sink where she washes up, two toothbrushes sit, two types of toothpaste. Two different shaving creams. The electric razor’s gone from its cradle, but there’s a regular one resting in a holder by the soap. In the cabinet, there are a lot more towels than one person needs, and of two distinct styles. A lot fewer of one than the other. Ariadne closes the cabinet door, changes her clothing into something less sweaty and stress-drenched, and leaves the bathroom. 

There’s one other door, mostly closed on a darkened room. She stares at it for a few seconds, then leaves it alone and heads back to the living room. A cup of something steaming waits on the coffee table in place of her water, and the kitchen light is on. Ariadne sets her bag down behind the couch.

“Hungry?”

His voice startles her. Was she staring aimlessly? She takes a quick seat on the couch and picks up the… well, she doesn’t know what it is, but it’s warm, and that’s nice right now. “Uh, a little? If that’s alright?”

His eyebrows lift but he goes back into the kitchen and returns with a bag of pretzels with peanut butter in the centers. She gloms onto them embarrassingly fast, and by the time she comes up for air, there’s a bowl of macaroni and some sliced chicken in front of her.

In his own seat again, Eames shrugs. “Afraid dinner was a little Spartan tonight.”

“Is this yours? I don’t need to…”

He waves her off. “No, go ahead. I’ve eaten.”

She pays attention to her food until her stomach’s no longer grouching at her so audibly, then looks up. He wasn’t watching her eat, but at her motion, he turns immediately and smiles, the attentive host.

“I really didn’t mean to just show up,” she says. It’s kind of the truth. Events had pushed her forward into a place of courage she hadn’t been thus far.

“Quite alright.” And still he doesn’t ask. He’s probably gleaning a lot more from her than she knows, but it’s nice not to be pressed for details when she’s so unsettled.

“Are you…” She clears her throat. “Um. You live here, too?”

Eames’ smile widens, then sinks back. He’s watching her in that way that reminds her to be uncomfortable, and she would be. Probably. If she didn’t also have to keep reminding herself to feel that way. Man’s a criminal. Then again, so’s she, and that’s most of her cohort these days. 

“For the foreseeable future,” he says.

That jolts her. Of course, Eames’ idea of ‘foreseeable’ and hers are likely very different. But there’s a climbing sense of dismay in her gut.

Ugh. What is _wrong_ with her? It was just a kiss, a tease and a tactic, and neither aimed to blindside her. Still, she’d let herself stumble into some sort of hope. It’s hard to begrudge Eames properly, though. Not when her fondness for him has already slunk back into place like it never left.

He looks very much at home here. The ways he traverses the rooms, the shuffle of his pj hems on the hardwood, the way he doesn’t hesitate at all in his search for dishes and leftovers and silverware. He’s been here awhile, long enough to shift into second nature. Long enough for Arthur to leave him here alone.

“Ah,” she says.

“Ah,” Eames echoes, softer, and Ariadne feels herself blushing.

Better to ignore it. If Eames gives out points for suspicion, Ariadne gives out points for owning what belongs to you. Her life is not what it was and she doesn’t need to be acting like she hasn’t been hanging out in other people’s brains, learning deep dark secrets.

But… fuck. _Fuck._

She _is_ young, maybe too young for this. She certainly never thought to consider—But clearly they are. Maybe they _were._ Maybe they always have been, and she walked right into the middle of a life story already well on its way, down a road on which she has no business hitching a ride.

She’s going to need time. It’s striking truer than anticipated, and she’s not sure if it’s Arthur she wanted, or the idea of him.

Or maybe just the thrill of that damned first job.

She’s been on two in the eight months since, turning to them when her thesis ceased to be enough, and she’d never connected with her teammates like she had on the Fischer inception. It’s been sobering, the knowledge that it wasn’t going to echo again and again, that sense of belonging. That it wasn’t just novelty that made that heist special.

“Ariadne?”

She meets his gaze and finds it a little reserved, but still welcoming. “Sorry, what?”

“I asked if you want the bed. I can take the couch.”

Oh god. The bed. She’s shaking her head before she realizes. “No, I’ll take the couch.” It would be weird, it would be _so weird,_ sleeping where they sleep, where they— “It’s fine. It’s big, I’ll fit.”

“Alright.” He gets her blankets, sheets, and a couple pillows, as well as some towels from the green set she saw, and helps her make up the couch into something resembling a nest. It’s damned cushy, she knows from sitting on it, and she can’t help but be thankful that she’ll probably be asleep immediately.

And not thinking.

 

**Day One**

 

The sunlight wakes her, warm on her cheek. The sweatshirt she slept in was nice last night, familiar when she needed it to be, but now it’s too hot and she shucks it clumsily, not opening her eyes, wondering if she can keep things low-key enough to drift off again once the sweatshirt is on the floor.

The knowledge of where she is, though, rouses her utterly.

She sits up, dragging the blanket from her chest just as Eames walks into the living room jingling keys. He’s wearing jeans and a zip-up sweater with a high collar. He sees her and smiles, lopsided. “Going out for a bit. They’re watching the building.”

She stares, then struggles with the blanket, which is suddenly tangled around her knees. “Wait—They’re outside, and you’re leaving?”

“Of course.” Eames opens the hallway closet and wrestles a scarf from inside it. He winds it around his throat as he steps back into the living room. “Can’t exactly change up my routine, can I?”

Oh, god, do they know this is Arthur’s place? Have they, are they cataloguing, do they have a _gun_ aimed at her or Eames right this second? 

He must see it on her face, though, because he comes over as if he always meant to, brushing his fingers across the breadth of her shoulders. It’s a light touch, but there’s pressure as well somehow; it’s meant to keep her in place. “I doubt they have the lay of the land,” he murmurs as he toes on a pair of shoes she hadn’t noticed the night before. “But they’ll be wanting to get it. Make things a bit more difficult for them, shall I?”

He gives her one more smile, then sets the perimeter alarm and locks the door after himself, leaving the apartment oddly silent. Ariadne sits on the couch, watching him through the window for as long as she can without actually getting up and going over to it. He heads down the street at a lazy lope, hands jammed in his pockets and shoulders hunched against the chill. He stops at a newspaper vendor, then continues more slowly, flipping through the paper he’s purchased until he’s out of her line of sight.

The street remains quiet, the hall outside the apartment soundless. Eventually, Ariadne gives up and uses the shower, and the towels provided her. She makes a rush job of it, anxiety growing with each minute left on her own, but she feels cleaner afterward than she did last night. Even if she’s still just fidgeting in the living room.

Maybe she should cut her hair. Dye it, something. Shit, she’ll have to ask Eames to get her the dye, unless Arthur already has some lying around here somewhere.

She hears him returning the second he steps off the elevator. He’s whistling, cheerful and absentminded, and his keys clink against the door much more loudly than she knows he’s capable of being. He comes in with coffee cup in hand and a small bag of something Danish-shaped.

Ariadne’s stomach growls. Well, he won’t have brought her anything. Purchasing Danish for two when he was clearly by himself last night is just a little suspect.

Eames passes her the cup, to hold, she thinks, until he shrugs off his sweater, produces another bag from somewhere within it, and tosses that to her as well. She has no idea where he hid it, but now she’s clutching a bear claw still warm from the ovens, and the liquid in the cup smells of a rich, dark roast.

Eames lifts his eyebrows and motions like he’s tapping the bottom of the cup. “All yours, Ariadne. I’m a tea man, myself.”

He goes directly into the kitchen and puts the kettle on. 

Ariadne follows him in and takes a cautious seat at the small, immaculate breakfast table. The coffee’s _damn_ good, though she has to add sugar, and the bear claw might be the best she’s ever tasted. She takes her time with it, even though the hunger itches. “I feel like I’m doing nothing but thanking you,” she says eventually, still trying to work her way through a sticky bite.

Eames leans against the kitchen counter, steaming mug in hand. “It’s no trouble.” He looks so placid, while her insides, devoid of all the more immediate worries, have begun to shift around in recognition of the situation again.

He’s not asking her anything, at all. But she can feel it shoving at her, the elephant in the corner only slightly bigger than the other elephant, the one she’s still having trouble wrapping her mind around. She takes a deep breath. “Uh, the job went bad.”

“How so?” Not _what was the job_ or _whose fault was that?_ Ariadne rubs her face and picks off another corner of her bear claw. The flaky pastry greases her fingertips.

“Someone sold us out.” She swallows too fast and has to wait for the bite to work its way uncomfortably down her throat. “I don’t know, I thought it was a pretty good team.”

“Who asked you onto it?”

She shrugs. She really doesn’t know. Rookie mistake right there. Arthur never would have made it. “The extractor was okay, I mean, I don’t think it was him. Dr. Miles knew him awhile back. I know all their names.” She sighs. “But they probably aren’t their real names. Right?”

Eames hums a little, and Ariadne straightens. She wonders if she even knows Eames’ real name. Or Arthur’s.

She clears her throat. “Uh, the chemist was Purcell, and the extractor was Peters.” Distant guy, but efficient. “Point was Bilali. We didn’t have a forger.”

“Ah, yes, for future reference, stay away from Bilali,” Eames says shortly, and drinks from his mug. Ariadne nods. 

“I should have vetted them myself.”

He gives something like a snort, but there’s little on his face to suggest that his scorn is directed at her. “Notoriously hard thing to do in this line of work.”

“Arthur vets them himself,” she says sullenly, glowering at her drink. Eames remains quiet, and the winter sunlight stretches across the kitchen floor. Separated from the icy air, it’s almost soothing.

“If I might hazard a guess?” Eames says at last, all business. “Bilali wanted layouts for a double level extraction, but he scrapped them at some point late in the game and had you redraft, while the chemist went under with you to personalize a newly minted compound. And then he released the chemist early and kept you and your extractor on for a few days to wrap up.”

“Well, we ended up not needing Purcell for the actual levels.” But she sees where it’s going, where it went. She clenches the empty bag in her fist and thumps her head down on the table. “Chemist wasn’t a chemist, he was stealing my designs. Damn. _Damn it.”_

“Ariadne, did you take any of Bilali’s money?”

She frowns at him. “No, he never wired the payment. And I didn’t wait around to be convincing.”

His shoulders lift and drop, resettling. “Good. Then this crowd will leave off in a few days. No sense chasing what won’t gain Bilali anything new.”

Just four levels she worked her ass off to perfect. “And if he thinks I know something I shouldn’t?”

Eames ponders, mouth quirked, swirling his tea under his nose. Finally— “No, this pursuit is halfhearted. If he wanted you gone, he’d have hired much higher up the food chain. He probably likes your work. He might have come after you with more originally, but that out there?” He waves a hand to indicate the window and the watchers supposedly lurking in the streets, casing the place. “Smells more like a distraction. I suspect your extractor—Peters, yes?—saw the con for what it really was, took advantage and managed to wring Bilali and Purcell dry while they were busy scamming you. This whole chase is to make the real thief feel safe, make him relax. Slip up.”

“How do you know that?”

He smiles widely and sniffs his tea, crossing his free arm over his chest to prop up his elbow. “Been that thief.” He pushes off the counter and takes a seat across the table from her. “However. Just to be safe, we’ll keep you out of sight for now, yeah?”

God, she’s really green. All Eames needed was a look at her pursuers, the vaguest outline of the job, and a couple of names. She’d thought Yusuf’s brand of double-dealing and Cobb’s bizarre form of schizophrenia were indicative of the worst this dream world had to offer. But those, as bad and strange as they were, were never aimed maliciously, never meant to victimize, not like this crude, obvious black market criminality. She wasn’t just lucky with her inaugural dreamshare, she was _fucking_ lucky, out of this _world_ lucky, because she’s clearly swimming in a shark pit and her bright orange floaties are drawing every predator like a pool of blood.

And here’s Eames, lounging in Arthur’s home, sharing Arthur’s bed. Dusting off his hands with a sigh and giving her that patronizing yank out of the range of champing jaws. 

Arthur, who probably never even considered something serious with her. Never crossed his mind.

“Shouldn’t have come here,” she mutters, and Eames gets up again for more hot water.

“Oh, we’re plenty safe.”

She raises her head and meets his eyes stubbornly across the small kitchen. “Yeah?” And watches his expression shift at her tone. He blows on his new mugful, leaning slowly back against the counter where he’d first started.

“Yes,” he says, and god, by the look on his face, he’s already got her number in this as well.

 _“You_ could sell me to them,” she accuses, feeling stupid, and irritated, and jealous.

Eames’ smile this time is thin. He studies her for a long, tight moment. “I could,” is all he says.

It’s a long minute full of the sounds of the teapot being unplugged, the tea bags and sugar put away, the milk settled back into the refrigerator door. Finally, Eames picks up his mug again, taking a sip and turning her way briefly. “I have some work to see to,” he says, calm. “Help yourself to what’s here.”

He gestures at the kitchen and pads out, down the hall to the bedroom. Ariadne sits in the sunlight staring at her half-eaten bear claw, and then nudges it to the side so she can rest her chin on her arms.

**

She unloads the dishwasher. She peruses the entire bookshelf. She reads the beginning of one of the books, not sure if it’s Arthur’s or Eames’. She flops back on the couch and takes a nap. At some point, she stops feeling sorry for herself and just feels _sorry._

She’s off the couch fast, then, digging into her pockets on her way back to the kitchen. There’s no way she can go outside. She’s locked neatly away from every penny she’s ever saved, and for the first time, the actual size of the apartment pushes in on her. It’s strange to feel so trapped. Ariadne piles crumpled bills and a handful of change in the center of the breakfast table, then steps back to eye her meager offering. 

At least she can pay Eames for breakfast.

Picking through the pantry without a mind to hide in its walls uncovers an array of gourmet food stuffs that very nearly distracts her from her guilt. In the end, she chooses the little jar of pesto because there is more than one of them, pulls down a bag of penne noodles, and goes to the fridge, where she finds a packet of frozen chicken breasts in the freezer. She sets it in a bowl of hot water to thaw and digs out a saucepan and a pot. There are some beautiful knives in a block by the microwave and a cutting board balanced above the stovetop. There are green onions and button mushrooms in the crisper, and three tomatoes so ripe she nearly tears the skin taking them down from the windowsill.

Within two hours, the smell of basil and garlic has filled the kitchen. She slices the tomatoes thickly and sprinkles Herbamare on them, sets them on a plate, and finally roots out yellow beets and mini bell peppers to grill.

When they’re done, nicely seared but still bright with color and dusted with herbs, she scoops them into another bowl, turns around, and finds Eames leaning in the doorway like he’s been there awhile. Ariadne looks down at her oven-mitted hands and back up.

“That was a jerk way for me to behave,” she says.

He leans forward and takes the bowl of grilled vegetables from her, drawing it to his face and inhaling deeply.

“Smells heavenly, Ariadne,” he says when he opens his eyes again.

She smiles, relief like a fresh wind. They take it all to the table, and they eat.

It’s fairly quiet, their meal. Maybe she should apologize again, but the words feel stale now on her tongue and she can’t bring herself to utter them. Eames spears the last of the peppers for himself and slides the rest of the beets onto the edge of her plate with the serving fork.

“You’re quite good at this.”

She looks up, mid-chew. “At...?”

“Cooking on the fly, love. Seems you have a talent for flavors that I never mastered.”

Before she can stop herself, her eyebrow is cocking. “You? Never mastered something?”

He just laughs, spreads his hands and then sits back, rubbing his belly. “Don’t misunderstand. I cook. I just don’t do it with particular flare.”

Ariadne looks down at the remnants of her (delicious, if she does say so herself) mushroom and onion pesto. “It was a jar.”

“Indeed. With the right vegetables and a fitting side dish, and no recipe in sight. Or am I wrong?”

No, there was no recipe. She eats one of the tomato slices she’d meant to be appetizers, and thinks about it. “I hope it was alright to use the sauce. And the chicken. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can get to the bank.”

“Jar’s mine anyway,” Eames says, waving it off. “Arthur makes his from scratch.”

“Oh. Oh, I bet that’s really good.”

Eames’ face screws up strangely. “Well, it’s not bad.”

She’s not sure what to do with that, but— “What, he’s not a good cook?”

“Oh, no, he’s a fine cook. If there’s a recipe available, then there’s food in your future.” Eames’ eyes are fixed on her, willing her toward something, and finally, finally she puts it together with the other things he’s said. She sets her fork down.

 _“Oh._ Oh, he— _Just_ the recipe.”

“To the letter. Any deviation is unwelcome, no matter how welcome the source.” He winks at her. “I know this from personal experience.”

Ariadne laughs, picturing Eames sneaking things into pots and pans when Arthur’s back is turned. An adventurous chef with no nose for spices and an obsessive dilettante with no patience for variance, both in the same kitchen. It certainly sounds hilarious.

“But this, Ariadne.” Eames uses a pepper to mop up what he can of the pesto and pops it into his mouth, sucking on his thumb. “This smacks of sheer intuition. What goes together well and what doesn’t. Perhaps you’ll impart some of your wisdom while you’re here? It might even stick.”

She grins, and he grins back.

 

**Day Three**

 

“Jeez. Thank _god_ you’re back, I am so bored.”

Eames takes off his hat and slaps it over the closet doorknob. Somehow he has managed two burgeoning grocery bags in one arm.

“You’ll be happy to know that your fans are losing interest.” He shrugs halfway out of his jacket as well, then comes to a full stop at the doorway to the living room. “Oy. What have you been playing at?”

“Did you not hear me?” Ariadne throws up her hands and stalks back to the couch, gesturing at the chaos of old newspapers on the table and the orderly stacks of National Geographic beside the bookshelf. “I listened to your CDs, Eames. All of them. I subjected myself to bands that made me pull out my totem multiple times! And then I alphabetized them. _For fun.”_

Eames stares around, then shrugs and heads for the kitchen, setting the grocery bags down on the counter. “I shudder to think what the clothes closet looks like at the moment. What exactly were you planning to do with the newspapers, may I ask?”

“I don’t even know. Origami?”

“Come in here and tell me what to do with all this.”

She goes into the kitchen and stands there beside him, staring at the food he’s unloading from the bags. She points. “That’s stroganoff. Maybe coleslaw, there. And a raspberry tart, if you have sugar and a tart tin?”

“Yes, I do, and oh, I doubt it, love,” he says, nodding. Ariadne frowns at him and he frowns back. “Are you just trying to get me out of the house again so you can mess about with the toilet cabinets, then?”

Ariadne snorts. “Be afraid of what I might find.” She grabs the package of ground round and holds it up. “Where’s the saucepan again?”

True to form, Eames is an ingredient adder. Luckily, he’s also a consummate student. As long as she keeps an eye on his array of choices, she’s relatively sure what they’re going to end up with. They do pull out a cookbook because Ariadne isn’t _that_ much of a Chef de cuisine, but they don’t have all the ingredients for any one thing. Luckily for Ariadne, she happens to be in the presence of the master of improv.

“Just use the muffin tin.” Eames passes it to her and roots around in the spice cabinet at the same time. They’re apparently fashioning some sort of cheesy cornbread, but Ariadne is pretty sure he means to make muffin-shaped tartlets.

“Don’t know if that’ll come out right. Might burn.”

“So we’ll watch it.” He tosses her garlic salt and coriander, and motions toward the cheesy bread dough, then cracks eggs to start the tart filling.

Ariadne sets the coriander aside and opens up the garlic salt. “I bet you leave a big fat mess in the kitchen when you’re done.”

Eames eyes her sidelong, but doesn’t answer. And in the end, she’s proven as wrong as she’s ever been by his immediate clean up job afterward, complete with pan washing and drying, and a stovetop scrub-down in between peering into the oven.

And it’s all fucking delicious.

 

**Day Five**

 

They’re sitting on the couch. Eames is in a t-shirt and jeans with scruffy hems, his leg cocked up against the armrest, and Ariadne’s got one of her pillows under her butt. There’s some really good brandy. She’s a little drunk. She’s possibly a little drunker than she’s ever been.

“I kissed him,” she blurts. “Or.” He kissed her. Is that worse? She fidgets, suddenly not knowing where to put her limbs, and where they currently are isn’t going to cut it. She rubs her eyes, feels Eames staring at her and tries to stop, but it’s more an ostrich-type thing going on now. If she can’t see him, surely he can’t… or something.

“When, love?” Eames sounds like he’s asking about the last time she took a trip to the mall. Which, come to think of it, she hasn’t done in a long while.

“Ahhhhh. Don’t want to tell you.” Wow. Could she just stop saying things out loud, maybe? She needs to bulk up, hit the gym and get herself more body for this alcohol to work through. If he throws her out, it would be okay, right? It’s been five days. She’ll go find a hotel or sleep in the train station or maybe in the stairwell at the end of the hall and never, ever see Arthur again out of embarrassment at having broken up his… “What are you?”

“You’ll have to narrow that down.”

“I’m not that kind of girl,” she states, and it’s important enough that she forgets not to look at him and instead sways out until she can grab his arm, make sure he’s paying attention. “I’m not. I didn’t know. You don’t _tell_ anybody, and how’m I supposed to know?”

“The Fischer job, yes?” Eames takes her hand in both of his and pats it, then puts another glass of brandy into it. “No harm done, Ariadne. Nothing to know about at the time.”

“Oh. That’s _good,_ then. That’s really good.” It’s really, really good. She’s not a home-wrecker, she’s not freeloading off someone whose life she ruined. Is ruining. “It wasn’t anything, you know? Wasn’t. He doesn’t like me.”

“I’m fairly sure Arthur likes you, Ariadne.”

“No, he doesn’t _like_ me. He’s just, like, inventive, in, in tense situations, and I’m not, and he should be less inventive, you know, in the future, but it’s okay. It’s okay.”

Eames rubs her back and, after a second, takes away the brandy he gave her. “Starting to wonder if it is, love,” he says softly.

She laughs, instead of that other thing she might start doing. “No, it _is._ Assume. Making an ass out of you and me. I should tell him that. Has he heard that? That’s a good one.”

He’s laughing now, too, a little. The edges of his eyes are crinkled. “Ariadne, would you like some cookies and cream gelato?”

 _“Yes.”_ She struggles to sit upright on the couch, and he comes back with the tub, and they watch a movie until she falls asleep.

 

**Day Seven**

 

“My first fuck up,” Eames says, wiping the corner of his mouth with his pinkie and gesturing with his glass at nothing in particular, “wasn’t a dreamshare at all. I was meant to boost a Maserati and flip it for a fee from this heavy who ran a chop shop in Battersea. I’m a bit quick of the finger, if you haven’t noticed.”

She has. Eames can juggle butcher knives. He did it last night. 

“Only, you see, I wasn’t as quick then. More quick of the tongue.”

“Oh, I’d say you’re still that, wouldn’t you?”

“I appreciate your candor. Anyway, I sold it that I could get into the car in a quarter of a minute. Maybe I could have, who knows? Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say. But because I was a cocky fuck, I chose the car belonging to the head of the largest crew in the city, never mind the borough. And no, before you ask, that was not by design. There was a time, Ariadne, when I was not the smooth grifter you see before you.”

She snorts and he flashes her a barracuda’s grin. 

“I did not get into that car in fifteen seconds. I managed it in thirty-seven, which, as you may be aware, is not all that speedy, but I was rather proud. As it happened, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, as the bastard who was looking to get in on the crew’s front line had already handed me over to the boss via a phone call.”

Ariadne looks him over more carefully. “Collecting the enemies early?”

He nods and sits forward on the edge of his chair, elbows on his knees. “From the very beginning, Ariadne.”

“I assume you got out of it.”

“Well, I learned to make friends very quickly. It’s proven itself one of the more lucrative talents I’ve gathered. But I did get my arse kicked first, and thoroughly. Got me in on the crew’s ground floor in the end, so there’s that.”

“How long were you with them?”

Eames squints at the wall. “Until I finally ripped off that gorgeous monster of a car in a _total_ of fifty seconds, thank you, and drove away with three briefcases crammed full of thousand pound notes.”

“Wow. As my mother would say, I lead a boring life.”

“Boring can be preferable.” He sniffs at his glass, swirls it, and drops the story. She doesn’t search after its trail.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she finally mutters, and Eames looks at her.

“Do what, love?”

She gestures around, not meaning the apartment at all, but the world she’s walked into. The Somnacin and the PASIVs and the subconscious heists. “I don’t think I’m good enough.”

He’s watching her keenly, and he points a finger at her, lifting it off the side of his glass. “Now that, right there, is telling. You ‘don’t think you’re good enough.’ Not ‘you don’t think you’re up to it’ or ‘you don’t know what you’re doing here.’”

She shrugs, but she can see what he’s getting at. “Why do you do it?”

He smiles. It’s faint, almost distant. “There are a lot of things I love about what I do, Ariadne,” he says softly.

She wonders if Arthur is one of them. If Arthur may not, in fact, be (or be on his way to becoming) the lynchpin. It’s a huge, wild thought that she can’t get her mind completely around. Caring for someone so much that the rest is all a sideshow, and the center of this world, the dreamshare and all its irritating details, have expanded along paths that will never be a trial to walk again.

“But.” He focuses on her again, clear and alert. “You do have to love it, I believe. Chemistry is not just something Yusuf does, and there’s nothing truly irksome to Arthur about the research, as tedious as it seems to us. You think that Cobb does not love extracting, to his bones? Oh, he gave it up, in an instant. He had the right reason, in his book. But it’s in his blood, has been for years. Probably always will be.”

“So. Is dream architecture in my blood, then, is the question.”

“It’s _a_ question.” He sips his drink. “Another one, no less important, definitely has to do with how dangerous this line of work can get. There are a lot of people in the business, for a lot of different reasons.” He studies her, then crosses one leg over the other with a sigh. “I could tell you what I think. You’re frightfully talented, Ariadne. Gifted. I suspect you see the dreamscape the way I see a forge, like a whole host of pieces just waiting to be molded and moved around. It’s inherently exciting. Thrums in the blood, and you can understand it, speak it like a language. But whether or not it’s something you’d like to devote your entire life to? I’ve no idea.”

“It’s not just the job, though, is it?” She smiles when he lifts an eyebrow. “It’s the people.”

He eyes her, cannily, if she’s not mistaken. But it shifts, back to that private distance that she’s not sure he knows he slips into. “Given time, it certainly can be.”

 _So give it time._ Provided she can learn, and learn fast, things she hadn’t expected to have to know… She can do that.

 

**The Tenth Day**

 

Arthur’s plane lands late. He snags a taxi and spends the ride with his chin in one hand, watching the lights of the city swing by. Fog creeps up out of the bay, and the ting-ding of the buoys offshore echoes strangely as he gets out of the taxi outside his building. 

He takes the elevator up and unlocks the door, going immediately to shut off the alarm where it blinks silently on the wall. The air feels cool; Eames must have some of the windows open. Arthur pulls his suitcase down the hall into the living room and stops dead. 

It only takes a second to determine that it’s not Eames on the couch. Arthur reaches for his coat pocket and the weapon there, and stares into the darkness, fingers twitching. It takes another few seconds for his eyes to adjust, and then he blinks, surprised.

Ariadne lies on her side, both hands dangling off the edge, nearly clasping. Her hair spills in a dark, curly curtain over the pillow, and a blanket is tucked up under her arms. It’s been months since he’s seen her, and for a moment, he just stands there and looks, remembering what feels like an entirely other life.

On the coffee table sits one of Arthur’s books with a scrap of paper keeping place halfway through. Beside it is an empty mug, a stick of lipbalm, and two metal barrettes looped in an elastic hair tie. Arthur steps closer and crouches down a few feet away. Ariadne doesn’t so much as twitch.

Good god, the woman has no self-preservation instincts. 

This room’s fairly chilly, and the sounds of the city whisper in with the breeze. Arthur shakes his head, fondly despairing, and lifts a folded quilt from the far arm of the couch. He spreads it carefully over her shoulders. 

“Hopeless.” He smiles in spite of himself. 

The rest of the apartment is dark and quiet. Arthur makes his way down the other hallway, nudging the bedroom door open and rolling his case in, thankful for the carpet. Movement from the bed draws his attention. Eames looks out at him from low-lidded eyes, one knee bent up under the duvet and an arm thrown out across the mattress. The alarm panel in here would have subtly triggered him awake, as designed, but not to wariness when it was shut down so quickly.

“There’s an architect on our couch.” It slips out, _our_ couch, and Arthur tenses. But Eames’ answer comes smoothly, if slurred.

“Certainly hope so. Else I’d have to get up and find her.”

The tension melts as soundlessly as it coalesced. Arthur pulls off his tie and sets it aside, then shucks his shirt and pants in favor of a soft tee and shorts. The shirt smells so distinctly of home as he pulls it over his head that he pauses, shutting his eyes. He thinks briefly about things Ariadne didn’t used to know, and then releases them until he’s had some sleep. “She alright?”

Eames sounds like he’s rubbing his face. “Better than she would have been.”

“Sounds like you had an interesting week.”

Eames grunts, shifting enough to get Arthur down into bed with him. His sigh is long and warm against Arthur’s forehead when they’re finally settled. He kisses Arthur sluggishly on the temple. “Job go alright?”

“Not dead. So.”

“Indeed.” Eames’ mouth tracks slowly down the side of Arthur’s face until Arthur only has to turn his head to kiss him back. It goes deep and fixed very quickly, and Arthur turns the rest of himself, too, hitches a leg around Eames’ thigh and relishes a reunion with all that hot, bare skin. 

Except.

“Interesting,” Arthur murmurs, snapping the waistband of Eames’ boxers with his thumb. Eames grumbles moodily and uses his leg to twine Arthur closer.

“Arthur. There is an _architect_ on our couch.”

Arthur sighs. “Fine.” He snaps Eames’ waistband again, then slides his hand beneath it, pulling Eames’ hips against his with a palm over his backside. “Can you sleep like this?” meaning the shorts, and the company in the living room, and mostly, himself in such close contact, their limbs all wound together as they are.

“Mm.” Eames kisses his eyebrow, then stays right there, breathing gently through his nose against Arthur’s forehead. Arthur thinks he’s asleep for at least a minute before his voice rumbles again, barely any space between words. “You know an extractor named Peters?”

“Might.”

“Mm,” Eames hums again, and Arthur knows he’s nearly gone. He wraps his arms around Eames, pulling his warm frame even closer, and breathes in the smell of his throat. 

Plenty of time tomorrow to ask.

~fin~


	6. The Unexamined Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter: At long last... THE CRUISE SHIP.
> 
> Yes. _That_ cruise ship. ^_^
> 
> Timeline: This story takes place directly after Inception, the film.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For bookshop, who has been gleefully asking about this chapter for ages. ^_^
> 
> Also, you'll be needing this: [a certain someone's swimsuit](http://www.studioeurope.co.nz/media/catalog/product/cache/2/small_image/5e06319eda06f020e43594a9c230972d/1/_/1_2_4/intymen-tie-me-up-swim-trunk.jpg). 
> 
> Thank you so much to dysonrules for the beta, and to coffeejunkii for being my sounding board.

One. Eames will get another room.

Two. Eames already knows what Arthur’s planning to tell him, and will smile at Arthur like he’s a child before patting his knee and gently shutting that door between them. It’s a glass door, and Arthur will be forever trapped, able to see right through to the opposite side.

Three. Eames will prove he’s successfully bamboozled Arthur for years by cutting off all ties, disembarking at the next port, and telling the captain that Arthur is wanted for domestic terrorism in eight countries. Which he is, but most people only know about five of those.

Four.

Eames will reciprocate.

There are countless other outcomes, varying in detail, but these four are the main prospects, without all the trim. They flare brightly in Arthur’s mind as he moves through customs, pulls out his passport, and sets his bags on the conveyor to be x-rayed.

A few lines over, another official is greeted in velvet British S’es.

**

They’re at the bar, seated under a woven palm awning that’s less tacky than it could be. Arthur sips a Red Hook with an umbrella stuck through the cherry, his view filled with colorful bottles of alcohol. Behind him, Eames reclines with a New York Times and a mojito in hand. His legs are crossed in front of him, in the sunlight from the knees of his khakis down. 

The breeze is salty and pleasant.

“As lovely as this all is,” Eames says, snapping the paper to make it stand up and squinting at the story through his sunglasses, “it would be more efficient if I had a mark to focus on.”

Arthur sighs and stirs his cherry-umbrella. “There’s this little thing I like to call ‘patience.’”

“Did he even get on at port, darling?”

“Oh, fuck,” Arthur answers, flat as glass. He turns enough to get a look at the people on deck. “No. He forgot his own birthday cruise. _Fuck.”_

Eames’ smile ticks relentlessly at the corner of his mouth. He’s got a bit of beard coming in along his jaw, just enough to look vaguely unkempt. “Sure you wouldn’t feel better with all your files at hand?”

Arthur glares at his drink. Glaring at Eames is too easy. “Who brings files on a cruise ship?”

“I suspect one person, at least.”

“Tell me, Mr. Eames, are there _ever_ times when you’re not a smartass?”

Eames touches the arm of his sunglasses. “Oh, darling, this is all for you.”

Arthur chooses a man at random from the group on the bocce ball pitch, memorizes him, then turns back to the bar. “Your eleven o’clock.”

Eames rustles his paper. Arthur hears his lazy, drawn out hum. “Well, well. He _is_ attractive, isn’t he?”

“Hm,” Arthur grunts. He reaches for a napkin and wipes up a tiny spill near his elbow.

Eames is quiet for a moment—studying the mark he’s been given. Arthur doesn’t need to look to know Eames’ routine. Then,

“Far easier way for me to get the lay of the land, you know.” It’s a murmur, a shade more guttural, just shy of too quiet. Arthur finds Eames with his sunglasses down his nose, gazing fixedly at the man on the pitch. That gaze is heavy, heated in a very particular way, and Eames, whose eyes are always on the move, is not moving at all. 

Except for his thumb, stroking slowly across his lower lip.

For a blinding second, Arthur wants to hit Eames hard enough to break his jaw. He can taste the re-spindling of his potential outcomes, a cheerless, slow flavor against the roof of his mouth.

Fucking jetlag is killing him. 

“Some professionalism, if you please.” He takes his drink back to their cabin for a nap. 

**

When he wakes, Eames is breathing shallowly on the bunk below, an arm cocked up over his head and his face turned away from the ambient light. The sky outside is black, the ship quiet except for the drone of the engines. Arthur gets out of bed and goes to the window. The moon is high, silvering waves and troughs alike. Along the horizon, the light washes like spilled paint over the sea.

He hears a sound behind him, a change in breathing. When he looks, only Eames’ head has turned, his bare chest still rising and falling steadily in sleep.

** 

That slice of bitterroot in Arthur’s throat is unforgettable: a car shot full of holes, craning over the seat and not knowing whether his shouts would be answered. It still burns there behind his tongue when he looks at Eames. It flooded fierce for whole minutes after he woke to a transatlantic jet’s dry air instead of river water in his mouth, and didn’t know if Eames had followed him up into the real world.

It’s a peculiar taste. It’s ruthless. It sears like acid through the last remaining wall, an albeit flimsy thing but there nonetheless, and now Arthur can’t ignore anything anymore. He’s been facing the harrowing truth for a month, and it’s still ruinous. Still exhilarating. As suggested, he’s finally dreaming bigger. The real trick, though, was never about doing it in a dream.

Arthur doesn’t have any files with him on this cruise. No flashdrives or tablets, or even a notebook. Generally, they aren’t required when the entire job is a sham.

**

It’s not the first time Arthur has fabricated a job to get what he wants. It _is_ the first time he’s fabricated a job to get something that doesn’t have to do with another job.

Arthur is the first to admit that his way of going about this is circular. It feels immature even to him, a secretive game made more for the middle school crowd than for jaded criminals. The truth is that he just wants the proximity. He needs to be able to look at Eames’ face and body and not feel like there’s a statute of limitations, not sense that expiration date looming. For nearly a year, cleaning up after and paving the way for Cobb, it’s been his own expiration staring him in the face, but there have been other dates that came and went long before that: Eames has had relationships; _Arthur_ has had relationships. Eames damn well died at one point, and now Arthur can’t believe he ever made it through that without realizing what’s really churning around in his blood.

He always did have instances of incredible idiocy.

**

“Where are you?”

“Out at the pool. Heat’s bloody brutal.” 

Arthur tucks his phone against his shoulder, maneuvering past another passenger and letting himself into the cabin. Even in the air conditioned corridors, he’s aware of the change, a certain thickness to the air. He deposits the stack of clean towels that he picked up on his way past the concierge, and strips out of his vest, searching for one of the shirts he hung up in the tiny, tiny closet. “He out there, too?”

“In the flesh. A lot of it.”

Arthur pauses, but Eames’ tone is definitely less than entertained. The day is looking up. “There in three.”

“I wait with bated breath.”

It’s not too bad in the linen shirt, at least not in the shade by the bar. The water’s awfully still in all directions, almost opaque where the sun glances off the undulations. In the distance, storm clouds puff, but it’s a long way off and not a thread of wind has made its way across the water. Arthur snags a stool that frees up just as he arrives. The bartenders look sweaty and hot, but they must be getting paid a lot because they smile continuously as they mix drinks.

It takes him a lot longer than it should to spot Eames. The pool’s fairly crowded—no wonder, with this incredible heat—and there’s a lot of noise. But there’s a row of lawn chairs along the far side, partly under the cabana, and the people who aren’t in the water are taking advantage if they can.

And Eames. Eames is.

The swimsuit is the color of a fire engine, with a set of white stripes on either hip and a thick white cord cinching the front closed. It clings to Eames’ thighs like it’s already wet, but Eames’ hair is still dry, ruffled, his eyes hidden behind a pair of aviators. 

Eames lounges deep in the chair, his abdomen ridged by the position, with a leg bent up and a magazine open in front of him. The palest skin in the world can’t draw attention from that perfect aesthetic blend. The ink lacing his shoulders and ribs provides a sinuous, provocative contrast with the red suit, and there is a faint bent to his mouth, wayward interest in whatever he’s reading. There’s a woman down the row who can’t take her eyes off him. She’s even pulled down her own sunglasses to stare, her mouth open around the straw in her drink. 

Eames turns a page, tilts his head, and taps a finger against the side of his leg, right where the swimsuit ends. Next to his hand is his cell phone.

Arthur clears his throat and dials. “Very fashionable.”

“Why, thank you, darling. It was a gift.”

“From whom?”

“From me.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Don’t get burned. I don’t want to hear you griping all night.”

“I assure you, I’m positively caked with sun cream. Ah—” Eames pauses, and Arthur watches as their target exits the pool and goes to a towel on the side, prostrating himself with a series of lithe twists and bends. 

Fuck, but Arthur only had to pick the most self-aware, narcissistic person on this damned boat. The man is practically making love to his towel as he stretches himself supine, and sure, there are a lot of people looking at him, but Arthur would guess that only fifty percent of them are wishing they were the towel. And the guy really is wearing an offensive suit, leopard printed, made to accentuate every bulge and leave everything else bare. It’s nowhere near the classiness of Eames’ square-cut.

“Hmm,” Eames hums across the connection and Arthur frowns. “What’s he done again?”

“Insurance fraud.” Arthur glances at Eames, and though Eames’ sunglasses are still on, Arthur has the overwhelming feeling those eyes are trained on him and not the mark at all.

He hangs up his phone and orders a drink.

**

The storm catches up with them just past midnight, slashing rain at the windows and filling the sky with electric-white light. Arthur lies in bed with an arm behind his head, listening to the thunder as it rolls like tympani drums. The window is cracked enough to let cool air in, and it skates over Arthur’s chest.

Below him, Eames exhales a word, and the bunk creaks as he stretches.

“What?” Arthur lifts his head.

“Said it’s lovely.” The bunk creaks again as he gets up, padding barefoot to the window. Arthur stares at the slope of his shoulders, the lightning smoothing his skin. Eames leans on the narrow sill and stares out into the darkness, his mouth hidden by folded arms.

“Used to get these thunderstorms in Michigan,” Arthur murmurs. “The lightning sort of sheeted across the sky, like synapses catching. You could see the rain coming like a wall.”

“You grow up there, darling?”

Arthur shrugs. “I grew up in a lot of places.”

Eames looks at him just as another flash lights the sky, turning his eyelashes silver. His hair spikes, rumpled and off-center, the ends dropping into lazy curls. For a long moment, the thunder fills the cabin. Arthur sits up and swings off the side, lowering himself to the floor with a thump. He comes up beside Eames, and Eames leans to the left, making what little room there is. The air flowing in is brisk, and outside, the sea flashes, waves throwing up spray. For the first time since he boarded, Arthur can feel the ship rocking.

He can’t stop seeing Eames, red and white at his hips, an eternity of skin and muscle, the fragile joints of his wrists and the smooth arc of his jaw under the sun.

“I was born in Michigan,” Arthur says, facing the storm but not looking at it, and behind Eames’ forearms, the edge of that perfect mouth lifts slowly into a smile.

**

It’s still rainy the next day, though much calmer. The decks are mostly empty, save for a few people walking through the grey in their coats, keeping beneath the awnings.

“I think you’re the only person to bring an umbrella on board,” Eames muses, sidling up to the railing. Raindrops fleck his gray blazer and sprinkle his hair. Arthur eyes him, then looks back out to sea.

Down the deck, one of the cheap umbrellas from the ship’s store blows itself inside out, sending its owner flailing. Arthur frowns. “Notice how dry I am.”

Eames coughs. “Never said it was anything but an excellent idea.” He turns around, cocking his elbows on the railing. “I’ve got us a table, if you’re hungry.”

Arthur just barely keeps himself from drifting closer, tightening his gloved hand around the base of the umbrella. They shouldn’t have a table together, not on a job. His mind knows it. The rest of him refuses to bow down before the lie. When he looks up, Eames’ eyes are sharp on him. Arthur’s throat dries.

He forces it out, keeps it low and hopes it’s not noticeable. “You know better than that.”

Eames is silent for several seconds. “S’alright, darling. He’s already eaten and gone below to throw his money at the craps dealer.”

Something’s happening to Arthur’s fortitude. It’s evaporating faster than he can track, baring him to the unforgiving light. And here in the glare, the holes are as plain as anything. He thinks, briefly and fatalistically as he follows Eames down to the dining room, that he _wants_ to be found out. 

Their choices are not numerous, but the food is excellent. Arthur savors balsamic vinegar and ricotta amongst leafy greens, garlic, and grilled chicken. Eames gets them a bottle of the house white without consulting Arthur, but it’s a great vintage. The earlier lunch shift has already come and gone, and now there are people lounging alone at scattered tables, enjoying glasses of iced tea or hot brews from pots, their eyes on the sucking, whipping sea. Arthur thinks, without specific provocation, that the armchairs just beneath the floor-to-ceiling windows would be the perfect place to curl up with a blanket and read. 

“Sheffield,” Eames says, apropos of nothing, and Arthur turns, feeling dazed. Eames’ eyebrows are up, his finger and thumb pinching at his lip. Arthur’s seen it before but has only his guesses to equate it with. Now it seems like uneasiness.

“Sheffield.”

“Brinsworth, actually,” Eames continues, and sits back in his chair with a soft sigh. As if pulled, Arthur leans forward, but Eames speaks again. “And then we moved, fairly quickly. I don’t remember any of it.”

“Sheffield is where you were born.” He eyes Eames, and when Eames frowns and opens his mouth, he cuts him off gently. “Brinsworth.” 

Eames’ fingers tap restlessly. Arthur wonders how many people he’s told. If he’s even being told the truth now. If that really matters, what with the way Eames’ mouth pinches and his own chest buzzes with the revelation. Whatever this is, it’s Eames’ truth; Arthur can see it.

Eames gives him a bittersweet smile, just a flash, and covers it with his hand. He looks the epitome of calm, slouched back in his chair with one leg kicked up over the other. He’s watching Arthur again, not just looking but really watching in that offhand way of his. He’s watched Arthur before, in the warehouse, just like this. Just this side of peeling him apart like a forge mark.

It should make Arthur uncomfortable, but he’s done fooling himself. His heart, however, is tripping along a lot faster than it should be.

“Going home after this?”

Eames shifts upright and the tight, knotted feeling dissolves. “Might do.” He huffs, a laugh that shocks Arthur with how unveiled it is. “Not even sure where that is.”

Arthur nods. He’s been there. And now that the brief flash of humor is gone, Eames looks oddly contemplative, the tiniest of creases to his brow as he fingers his wine flute.

“Home’s San Francisco,” Arthur says, “for me.” There’s no plan in this, just a spilling of information, and it’s dangerously liberating, not tracking the course of his words. He clears his throat and doesn’t look at Eames, opting for more wine instead. With that sort of lead-in, a person of Eames’ skill set would have very little trouble locating Arthur, as long as he stayed put. The idea has the kick of a drug, looping him higher, almost lightheaded. He has no idea why he’s doing this, giving up his secrets to the most competent thief he knows.

Scratch that. He knows exactly why he’s doing this.

But Eames just takes it in stride, finishes off his glass and reaches for the bottle. “How long have you lived there?”

“Six years.” Give or take. He bought the place before he met Eames, but he doesn’t call it ‘living there’ when the apartment is locked up, dusty with mildew and emptiness while he hides on the other side of the world.

Eames whistles, and even that sound is enough to ratchet right up Arthur’s nape. “Long time in one spot, darling. I ought to hire you to secure my properties.”

He doesn’t want to secure any of Eames’ properties. His stomach is jumping with what he wants to do, isn’t even willing to articulate, not when he doesn’t have a plan straight toward it. He’s never felt more literally at sea, jaw clenched and heel bouncing, all his muscles sore when he lies down to sleep at night, and he doesn’t know if it’s happiness he’s feeling or terror, but he’s never been on such shaky ground of his own creating.

They’re sitting together in a restaurant on, as far as Eames knows, a fucking job. The old Arthur, the Arthur before inception brought down every barrier he’d erected to hide his attachment to this man, would have rolled his eyes and shot him out of this dream.

He’s not entirely sure what he’s doing. “How many properties do you have?”

“Three… no. Four?” Eames looks up at the ceiling and Arthur dwells on the roughly stubbled line of his throat. “No, it’s three. Lost one in Polokwane.”

Arthur sniffs. “And here I thought you were good at cards.”

“Wasn’t the nice one.” Eames smiles cheekily, and bumps Arthur’s chair, almost like he had in the warehouse. There’s nothing remotely childish about it this time, and Arthur’s chest aches.

He _does_ know about three of Eames’ homes. And none of them are in the United States, let alone the west coast. Two have such different time zones from Arthur’s that speaking like normal people on the phone would require a feat of engineering just to figure out who was ahead of whom. Wherever he chose to live, Eames would be what Arthur, a consummate traveler, would term ‘far away.’

He knows it’s not his lunch that’s making him feel sick, but it’s a comforting fantasy. “I usually find that not throwing my property’s title into the kitty helps in securing it.”

Eames’s laugh is heartfelt, accompanied by an honest-to-god squirm in his chair. Arthur grins, unable to help himself, and Eames passes him the wine.

**

They’re just out of port, a pristine spit of land covered in white sand lying behind them. It had been nice to get off the boat, walk around a bit. Pretend to tail their target through the city markets and into questionable nightclubs. Now, the niceness has faded.

The weather’s lovely. Eames is wearing the suit again, and Arthur’s body hurts, a low, irritable pain settled squarely in his pelvis and radiating up his back.

He’s forgotten who the mark is. Hasn’t attempted to get a name, an age, the most flimsy of backgrounds. He’s not even trying and he’s aware of it, an appalled kind of observation that doesn’t feel like it belongs to him. He’s floating, watching himself slog deeper into the mire, grimly staring ahead at the endless expanse.

Eames’ waist is just cruel, the script of his tattoo dipping out of reach, the hooks of his hips drawing down in a vee, marred by the line of dark hair over his belly. His hand, curled absently just above it, makes Arthur want to shoot something.

He stares. He feels stonewalled. He feels insane.

On the other side of the deck, Eames picks up his phone. Arthur answers on the third ring. 

“Are you out here, darling?”

The nickname has never hurt before. Arthur rubs the bridge of his nose and turns back to the cool shadow of the bar instead of the blaze of what he won’t just go over and take.

“Arthur.”

“Yes.”

Eames doesn’t say anything for a long while. Arthur knows he’s found his location and is looking at him, not at wherever the mark may be. Sweat trickles down Arthur’s sides beneath his shirt. He tries to picture his own back, his stance on the stool, elbows braced on the bar in front of him.

And then Eames makes a small sound, like an ‘ah.’ “Going in, I think.” There’s shuffling, the grunt of Eames rising from his chair. Arthur shuts his eyes. “Sauna, if he sticks to his usual. I think I’ve lost two kilos already.”

“You’re going after him, then?”

“Undoubtedly the best place to observe.” Eames sounds so careless, and yet there’s an eagerness that makes Arthur’s chest hurt with the desire to follow, to toss his shirt and trousers, go in there in only a towel, and keep space between Eames and everyone else.

“Like being drunk,” Eames is saying. “That kind of heat loosens everything up, especially the tongue.”

Arthur’s hand shakes on its way to his drink and he fists his fingers against the bar top. “Don’t get too close.”

The last thing he hears is Eames’ snorted exhalation before the call disconnects.

Arthur orders bourbon, straight, and swigs it back, then gets another. His throat burns in an entirely new, flat way.

The hell is he doing? Playing with fire, he thinks sourly, and the worst kind. Four days and he can’t figure out how this ends. Can’t remember how to be sure.

Three days left till the final port, and then… done. What in god’s name was he hoping to accomplish?

“You alright, mate?” says the nearest bartender, and Arthur is so sickly amused he almost laughs.

“Look around you,” he mutters. “Is anyone here alright?” He finishes his drink without returning the man’s look, another fiery flood down his throat. He doesn’t order another, and eventually the bartender leaves for more generous patrons.

**

It’s a good hour before he returns to their empty cabin. Dinner is being prepared—he smelled it as he walked past the kitchens—but he’s so far from hungry that any food sounds disgusting. His tongue feels raspy against the roof of his mouth, and he can’t decide if he regrets not drinking more or if he’s glad of his reticence. 

It no longer feels like any sort of careful consideration, what he’s doing, but rather, a series of stones launching into a pond, smacking down into the surface and shattering the stillness in great, random heaves. He has no idea when the next one will fly, or where it will fall, much less what will result from it.

When Eames arrives at last, he’s in a clean dress shirt and trousers, belted. Not the suit and robe. He must have come back here early on, to be out again by the time Arthur returned. Probably at the casino sophisticated enough to demand elegant clothing. Arthur takes a moment to steady himself, but he can feel the weight of Eames at his back now, dense and inescapable.

“Did you eat yet?” he asks at last, and is satisfied with the level tone.

“No,” Eames says.

Arthur nods. He gets up from where he’s sitting on the edge of Eames’ bed, poking at his phone, and lifts a vest from his luggage in the corner, trying at least for the semblance of etiquette if he can’t eat. Behind him, the unusual stillness pervades, even as Eames loosens his tie.

“You know, it never once occurred to me that the one I might have to be worried about is you.”

It’s so normal a tone that Arthur registers the kick-leap in his chest before he processes the words. He drops his jacket to the suitcase and straightens, but doesn’t turn. He’s not ready to see Eames’ face.

When he does look, Eames is, strangely, not angry. He stands with his tie half pulled, collar undone. His eyes bore into Arthur, but Arthur recognizes curiosity above all other emotions. It’s what’s beneath that uppermost layer that Arthur can’t get as good a handle on, but the overall feeling is not pleasant.

He won’t refute it. He gazes back at Eames steadily, and sees the instant Eames understands that no answer is forthcoming. 

Eames claps then, slow and sharp, each strike like a crack of wood. “Bravo, darling. You’ve outdone yourself.”

That stings. That is not curiosity, much closer to contempt. But it’s not quite there either. Arthur summons himself.

“This isn’t about hurting you.”

“Well, that’s brilliant, Arthur. Cheers.” Eames sounds wounded now. There’s a tilt to his voice that pangs in Arthur’s chest. Never directed at him before, never him. He hates it.

“Did it not occur to you that I might research him?” Eames continues with the removal of his cufflinks, tossing them toward the shelf in the bathroom. “He’s not in banking, or any sort of finance.” There’s more, so much more than the overturning of a few stones. Regardless of the careless attitude he fools people with, Eames is thorough to a fault.

“There’s no job.” It should feel good to get out, but that secret is the least of Arthur’s concerns right now, and it only feels like a stepping stone on what may ultimately be an insurmountable slope.

“My god, are you sure?” Eames isn’t trying to hide his sarcasm, but it’s not cruel yet, just there. Cool and assessing. Most worrisome of all, detached. He’s backed up a whole lot more than Arthur first thought. Might as well not be standing in the same room for the distance between them. “And your reason for getting me out here?”

“Because I could.”

Clearly not what Eames was expecting, from the way he looks at Arthur. The cabin is hellishly silent. Arthur can feel the air pressing, and yet, in some way he feels freed. It’s not like Eames can go anywhere that isn’t on the ship. He watches Eames right back, and Eames’ eyebrow slowly climbs.

“I could, Eames. Look at you, look at _this._ You’ll follow me anywhere.”

Eames doesn’t say he’s reassessing that inclination, but how could he not be? Arthur moistens his lips. “You’re not in any danger. I swear. No one on this ship gives a shit about us.”

“Then why are we here?” Very deliberate. Disturbingly soft. Every single iota of Eames’ attention is focused on Arthur, and it’s harrowing and heady at the same time.

He can’t answer that. He’s not sure he even knows anymore, and it’s all too large to cram into words. It’s nothing that Eames would understand upon being told, not if he doesn’t understand already.

God, he’s played this all wrong. Should have left more hints, better clues. Used his time more wisely, because now they’re at the climax moment, arcing for the fall, and Arthur may have wasted all his opportunities on signals that weren’t meaningful enough.

“You wanted me here,” Eames murmurs. He steps closer, and in this room, he’s already way too close. Arthur keeps his vigil with the wall.

“I did,” is all he says.

He expects Eames to ask him why, but Eames just says, “Hm,” almost to himself. He moves away a little bit, then sways back. “Arthur.”

“Eames.” _For god’s sake. Whatever else you do, just let me down easy._

Fingers tuck in behind his ear, splaying out to turn his face. Eames’ hand feels clammy, humidity gathering in his palm. “You try too hard, darling,” he whispers. There’s an instant—his eyes dart and Arthur feels the tiniest of tremors through Eames’ fingers.

And he can’t. He just can’t anymore. He tosses in his last card; he pushes up and kisses Eames because he wants. Because he _can._

Eames’ breath leaves him at the touch. He’s slow to follow, the faintest movement of his mouth against Arthur’s. But the movement never quite stops: Eames lifts into it, lips parting, coaxing Arthur’s apart. His eyes are still open, a smoky, fixed heat, like the metal of triggers and bullets. It’s an uncertain kiss, but then Eames’ eyes shut and it becomes one he’s taking, right now, right here. Arthur sucks in a breath as the pressure of Eames’ fingers firms against his neck. He thumbs Arthur’s jaw up and takes what he’s after, the tip of his tongue tracing the planes of Arthur’s mouth. Arthur’s beyond willing to give it; he seizes Eames’ face between his hands and turns him, pushes deeper, takes his fill of the taste he’s been craving for years, and it’s familiar enough to make him want to cry. Eames tastes the same as he did in that club, his tongue moves the same way, his lips feel the same, his voice clicks in his throat the same, his breathing hitches _the same._

Fuck, now that he has this, he’s not going to be able to stop. This is going right to the finish, or he’s going to end someone’s _life,_ he can feel the way he’s shaking. _Too much,_ his mind breathes, but he knew that going in, didn’t he? This trip, this con, was never meant to play at halves. This was to get him what he wanted, or get them both to the door.

Eames kisses him like there are things he’s planning to take from Arthur and keep, covetous and forever. The way he holds Arthur’s face doesn’t leave him any room to move. If Arthur wanted to move, that would be a problem. Instead he pulls Eames’ tie the rest of the way off and makes demands of his own of Eames’ mouth, and Eames just seems to twist and give and hand him exactly what he’s looking for. Arthur’s belly tightens, so fierce that he nearly doubles over. He can feel Eames hard against him, an inch from a contact that will spur him interminably, hike this right over the edge. If Eames chooses, right in this instant, he could make Arthur come as hard as he’s ever done.

It recedes, a languorous, throbbing burn. This, Arthur knows well. This will last for ages if he lets it.

Eames yanks at his own shirt without leaving Arthur’s mouth, choppy breaths to match choppy movements as he drops it on the floor. Arthur grabs at Eames’ belt at the same moment Eames goes for his vest, and Arthur sways, off balance. But Eames jerks him into place, starts flicking buttons open. Arthur curls his fingers at Eames’ fly, eventually comes out of the daze, and shoves Eames’ pants open. He has to stop then to let his vest drop, to get out of his shirt, because Eames is way ahead of him, stripping him with an indelicate fervor. He gets both hands on Arthur’s bare skin, fingers splayed over his sides, and hunches, attacks his throat instead, sucking hard enough to sting. Arthur hugs him close, pressing that mouth to his throat, hisses as his feet leave the floor, just a little jump, but Eames—fuck, he’s strong, he’s so—Arthur’s twice as hard as he was, squirming with the pressure of it. He winds his fingers into Eames’ hair, pulls him up, fastens their mouths together where he can flood his tongue with flavor again.

They bump the wall, and Eames grabs hold of the bed frame as they rock dangerously. Arthur can feel the shiver, the strain as Eames rights them, the cool bar up his back as Eames settles him against the bunk ladder and whites out his mind, tongue and hands and hips slotted home, a grinding rhythm that gives no space for recovery. Arthur squeezes the backs of Eames’ thighs with intent to bruise, rolls up, and opens his eyes in shock at the sound Eames lets out. 

_“Don’t_ you dare,” Eames hisses against his mouth, “don’t you end this.”

He’s not planning to, and Eames knows it, no matter what he says. Arthur watches Eames’ pupils dilate even further, hitches directly up into him so there’s no question of what is rubbing what, only a layer of cloth in the way now. He looks Eames in the eye, holds it, could hold it forever. God, he could look into Eames’ eyes for the rest of his life. There is absolutely no incentive to break this gaze.

Eames kisses him ferociously, like he can’t help himself. Arthur slips around the bed rail and barely catches them, clamping around Eames with his free arm. But Eames just urges him back, and then they’re on the wide lower mattress, the bedding lumpy under Arthur’s thigh. 

It’s not as hard to get their pants off as it could have been. Just a quick shimmy from Eames, an arch and a kick for Arthur, and then, _then_ Eames collapses in a slow drop atop him, insinuating his foot under Arthur’s calf, hips meeting with a sharp flare that ripples up Arthur’s spine. He opens his mouth, doesn’t hear any sound. Eames tilts his chin back down and claims his lips, dirty and knowing. Has he never forgotten? They’ve never kissed except that once, and yet he works Arthur’s mouth like he’s been poring over the footage for eight years, studying unblinkingly in the darkness, memorizing the curves of Arthur’s mouth, the rise of his chin and the way his fingers fit just over the breadth of Arthur’s throat, and sure enough—

“Could stay here.” It’s a slur, meshed in the slicking of their tongues. Eames’ fingers are at his nape, thumb running the line of his jaw. Arthur wants him so badly he _hurts._

“Please don’t.” It’s a miracle he’s coherent. Eames shifts him up the bed, rough palms along his sides, and Arthur pushes against the mattress to gain purchase. Eames’s hand finds his thigh, tucks him close and thrusts down, and Arthur arches.

“You’re absolutely right, darling.” Eames sounds winded. Arthur glances his mouth over Eames’ and goes for the soft heat of his throat instead, biting, nibbling, flicking his tongue into the gathering salt. Oh, hell, that’s going to be hard to stop, and he doesn’t even know what he wants, just… all of it, all, everything he can have. They’ve fought and died and incepted and survived, and he’s stupidly waited, thought he had reasons, and then he gambled, he threw their friendship into the pile because it was the thing he treasured most and the one thing he didn’t _want_ anymore, damn it, and Eames was there waiting for him, too.

Eames tastes like sweat and the sea, like rain, like agitation and exasperation and now, a primal abandonment. It’s scary. Arthur’s a greedy, greedy fuck, he wants to strip it all from Eames and wrap himself in it.

Eames drags his way down Arthur’s body inch by trembling inch. Arthur thumbs the tattoo at his shoulder, squeezes, unable to help himself when Eames’ nose skates to the hollow of his belly. He fondles Arthur’s balls, presses into his perineum. It’s enough to choke a graceless cry out of him. “Oh, god, you’d better…” he manages, “you’d better…” He clutches Eames’ hair fruitlessly, palms his face and feels the scrape of beard. Eames takes him into his mouth like he’s been waiting for it, like the rest of Arthur’s body has disappeared and there’s only this.

Arthur does shout this time. It’s Eames’ name in his head, whatever it sounds like out loud. 

As soon as Eames hears it, he’s gone, back up Arthur’s body in a raw slide that Arthur feels to his _scalp._ Eames kisses him fingertip by fingertip, and for a long, brittle second, Arthur has no idea what he’s doing, and then he does know. Oh, he knows, he remembers the fire there, the white slash across his fingernail that he’ll have till the day he dies. He remembers the skinned throb of his wrists the instant before Eames gets there, too, laves with his tongue, kisses with a delicacy that breaks Arthur’s heart. 

The premonition of going through two whole days with this gaping, roaring space under his ribs is so painful he yanks his hand away. “Fuck, stop.” It’s nothing but a whisper, and it doesn’t matter, because he’s kissing Eames again, fumbling for him between their bellies. Before he can get there, Eames roughs an arm beneath his knee and Arthur shocks into stillness, meeting a darkened gaze, a flushed face, hair damp and curling against Eames’ forehead. For an agonizing moment, they lock eyes. Eames’ breaths are swift in the stillness. Arthur can hear his own heart beating.

And then he reaches anyway and Eames crumples, a groan that vibrates through Arthur’s shoulder. He hitches forward, helpless, into Arthur’s hand, and Arthur tucks his leg up behind Eames, heaves him in closer, bucks into him at the same time. Eames _bites_ him. He shoves his nose into Arthur’s neck and hikes Arthur against him, dragging his belly across Arthur’s cock. Arthur shudders, and the rhythm, oh god, it’s set, he’s so close and he doesn’t even care anymore as long as he comes with Eames’ hand on him, smelling Eames, the sweet-salt of him on his tongue.

The room is beginning to feel hot and close, the air clinging to Arthur’s skin. Sweat beads down his face. Can’t get relief, there’s nowhere to turn. He moans into Eames’ mouth, curls up into him, strokes hard again and again, wanting nothing more than to watch Eames come, “Come on, come on, do it, I want to see you—”

In the end, Arthur comes first, a sucking sensation at his lungs, his gut, the muscles in his legs. He slams his head back on the bed as it batters through him—He snatches Eames’ hand and stills it on a stroke, lets out a shuddery hiss when the sensation finally sinks to bearable levels. 

When he drags his eyes open, Eames is staring at him, his gaze skipping up and down Arthur’s body as though he’s never seen anything like it. Arthur lets go of Eames’ wrist, not wanting to release him at all, fumbling lower in a sudden, inexplicable panic, brushing his own spent cock and biting his lip at the wave of _too much too much,_ but there he is, still hard. Eames’ face goes tight and vacant, almost-pain. Arthur strokes once, and Eames comes hard enough to keel him onto his elbows.

His chest expands, pushing at Arthur’s breastbone. He’s feverishly hot, heaving hard enough that his shoulders shake. Arthur can’t get his hands to leave Eames’ skin. There’s so much of it, wildly alive with the movement of muscle. Eames’ ribs swell and contract, and Arthur finally settles his hands there. Presses his fingertips in.

He doesn’t realize he’s repeating Eames’ name until Eames stirs, lifting off him and taking his chin in hand, capturing Arthur’s mouth with a longing kiss. Like he’s reaching inside Arthur. There should be so many words attached.

It’s a long time before Arthur remembers to stop.

Eames dwells on him as though _he’s_ attached. Arthur doesn’t know what he imagined Eames’ kisses would be like when they weren’t aimed at his mouth, but this is soft. Lingering in that achy way Arthur remembers from the first time he ever had a thing for someone, the naïve, hopeful helplessness. Things he dreamt about and knew would never happen, but this feels like the embodiment of that, and he draws Eames back to his mouth where maybe he’ll be able to… grasp it, something. Get his finger on this emotion at last.

The only clue to how long they’ve been kissing is the insistent pang in Arthur’s pelvis. He groans, realizing he’s hard again, so hard it jags through to his thighs and lower back. As if everything’s all knotted up in there, waiting for the keen snick of release. Eames whispers something Arthur can’t make out and shifts atop him, and Arthur clamps onto his hips, stilling all movement.

“Stop, stop, wait.” He sucks in noisy breaths, aware of how loud they are but unable to care about anything but that intent thrumming. Eames pulls back with a gust of an exhale, mouth reddened and beautiful. Arthur’s glad the lights are on. He wants into Eames, wants… he can’t even choose. How long has it been? Neither of them has said a useful word, but he doesn’t want to talk about it, he just wants to _do._ Have this again as many times as he can until one of them comes to his senses.

The look in Eames’ eyes is very sensible indeed. Arthur can only stare, until Eames rolls, careless till he gets a grip on Arthur’s hips and lifts him on top of himself instead. The desire spikes overwhelmingly. Arthur clenches onto Eames, straddling his waist, his knee pressing just over the text on Eames’ hip.

He’s always known Eames was strong. But to be faced with it like this, naked and close enough to feel him breathe, to see each muscle tense up as he maneuvers Arthur where he wants him—

Eames grips his thighs in warning, then pushes them apart gently. Arthur doesn’t know what he means to do until Eames extricates his legs, lets them fall either side of Arthur’s hips instead and curls his feet close behind Arthur’s ass.

“And now for something completely different.” Eames is obviously trying for amusement, but his voice cracks in all the wrong places. He stares up at Arthur as if daring him to challenge.

Arthur runs a hand down Eames’ chest, lingering over each whorl of ink. “You want me to fuck you?” He has to know for sure before he does anything. It’s what _he_ wants.

“I do, indeed.”

There is such a discrepancy, Eames’ words to Eames’ voice. If Arthur didn’t know any better— “How often do you do this?”

A pause. “Not my usual.” He strains upward very slightly, pressing the flat of his belly to Arthur’s leaking dick. Arthur presses him back down, shaking. He feels like he should think, figure this out, but part of him feels like he already knows.

Eames’ fingers encircle his wrist. He lifts Arthur’s hand to his lips and tongues the pad of his thumb. It’s not lewd so much as tender, and holy fuck, Arthur has never felt so possessive, never so afraid of it. 

He pushes up to his hands and knees, putting space where it’s desperately necessary. “Look, I know I don’t have any exclusive claim on you.”

“Arthur.” Eames looks up at him, hair a haphazard splay against the sheets. He runs two fingertips down the arc of Arthur’s throat, just over the flutter when Arthur can’t help but swallow. All the way down over collar and sternum to the sensitive hollow at his navel. Arthur jumps at the touch, tries to still. Looks up just in time to see the absolute chasm in Eames’ eyes when he says—

“Claim me.” Shakes his head like he’s offering something obvious. Not sultry, just quiet. Words.

His _mouth._ Shit. Eames’ lips part a tiny bit more around his next breath. Arthur feels the flux of air. If this is a dream, if this isn’t really happening at all, Arthur might just choose it over his real life. If either of them even have real lives anymore.

He leans in and Eames half rises off the bed, like he’s expecting to be struck. Moved. His eyes skate, he breathes hard, in and out. Arthur doesn’t think Eames knows he’s doing it.

He wonders what the hell is really happening here.

He’s wanted to be in Eames for ages. He can remember clearly the instant he first articulated it, a time when Eames wasn’t even present, just the ardor in the eyes of two marks as they caught gazes across a room. Arthur could read it all, then, the way the woman’s insides still twisted with the feel of the man, the way the heat of her body bled over into her partner’s eyes. The way his pupils flooded wide, and her nostrils flared as she drew a barely composed breath. But the way he _looked_ at her…

God, Arthur had wanted to fuck Eames then. Wanted that heat, _his_ heat, around him and moving. Wanted the clench, the break of that gasp across Eames’ lips. A bad time to have revelations, but a vivid one.

It’s almost too much to have Eames look him in the eye now and ask for it. Goad him to do it. Set the bar up and wait, trembling, for it to fall.

Eames’ mouth is oddly tentative, and Arthur—He doesn’t know what to do with that, so he turns the kiss, searches until he recognizes what he finds: this is the kiss he got in that club, powerful and steady and a little aloof—like you _would_ kiss someone you’re grinding with in full public view. Except that Eames takes his face in both hands and forcibly stills them, tilts their foreheads together, lips at his mouth, and…

Arthur melts. Doesn’t mean to. The intimacy is ardent enough that he forgets to kiss back. Lets himself be kissed instead. Eames’ leg slides up again and hooks, the heat of his calf itchy over Arthur’s hip.

“Come on, darling,” Eames breathes, lilting, but Arthur’s irritation disintegrates at the gasp Eames shudders through. It’s not amusement at all, but frenzy. Eames breathes deeply and fast, noses at Arthur’s mouth, skin flushing, and all those fucking tattoos… Arthur rakes his hands over them, squeezing, moaning into Eames’ mouth before he recalls himself and scrabbles over the side of the bed. Where, where the hell is his bag, he—

He has to push off, lunge clumsily over the edge and drag it to him, yank the zipper pocket open. And then he can’t get his fingers around the condoms or the lube, not with Eames pressed naked against him, sucking at his chin, clenching his hair in fist after fist. Eames is hard, rubbing up into Arthur’s belly, and Arthur doesn’t want to come again like this, he wants to open Eames wide and relish every inch, wants to slide in and bottom out and thrust Eames into the mattress until Eames can’t speak, can’t even gasp, just writhes there openmouthed, can’t even say Arthur’s _name._

Fuck, he wants to hear his name.

He pulls himself back onto the bed, pops the cap open and slicks his hand, and then Eames’ muscles all stiffen, right as Arthur hitches a shoulder beneath his knee. The hand in Arthur’s hair tightens so much that his eyes sting. Eames licks his lips and shifts across the sheets. His eyes dart to Arthur’s and away. Back again. It’s such a slow, clear moment, like the tick of a clock.

Arthur reaches down and presses the first finger into Eames. Not slow; neither of them need slow. Just… present. The frenzy clicks at his spine, _move, go, just—_

“To the right,” Eames spits, then shudders as Arthur strokes, nodding, a ruinous full-body roll as smooth as a snake. Arthur watches, mouth dry, can’t drag his eyes away as Eames bites his lip and falls into it. His erection’s flagging, but there’s nothing but exquisite distraction on Eames’ face. Arthur circles his finger, presses in with another, and Eames whimpers.

“This alright?” Arthur manages, and Eames shakes his head, clutches Arthur closer.

“Oh, god, you have no idea what you do to me, do you?” Eames gasps. It turns into a flood. “Fuck, just, yes. S’fine, it’s lovely, you can do whatever you want to me, I promise you that—”

Arthur changes his angle and Eames’ lower back leaves the bed, an unsteady huff and a worrisome shudder that Arthur knows well. He backs off, tenders his touch. Leans up and catches Eames’ mouth.

“Were right, you know.” Still murmuring, like Eames has forgotten he’s doing it. “Follow you anywhere in the world, darling, ask and I’ll go, I’ll, I’ll _come,_ ah, you could say anything and I’ll probably come, you could read Webster’s to me and I’ll—”

Arthur’s going to shatter over this, had no idea he needed it, but it’s hitting dead center again and again. “You always talk like this?”

For a long, still moment, Eames stares up at him. “No,” is all he says, perfectly lucid.

“Ah, fuck—” Arthur takes his mouth at the same time as he adds a third finger, and Eames surges into both kiss and embrace. Arthur’s never going to last, he’ll barely make it into the condom at this rate, and he’s suddenly, terrifically desperate _not to end it._ There’s a finality to this, maybe the taste of the air, maybe the fever in Eames’ eyes, maybe the sheer heat around Arthur’s hand, and if he does one thing, one perfect, extraordinary thing in his life, it’s going to be this, with Eames, right now.

He pushes down the bed, takes Eames into his mouth and enjoys it when Eames ceases his litany in favor of shapeless sound, half words and half not, moans Arthur’d had no idea he could make, the thrust of his hips a living cadence as Arthur sucks him down. He finds Eames’ prostate again and strokes mercilessly, breaking him another inch further, then another, another, until Eames’ face and throat are red, his breath clotted, his hand an unforgiving fist around Arthur’s wrist.

Each shudder now is a precipice. Any second, Eames’ll come. Arthur pulls off and attacks his side just where it dips into his hip, easing his fingers free, lipping at the hair covering Eames’ belly. Biting the middle of a word, right over an ‘l.’

His hands are too slick.

“You do it,” he breathes. Eames grabs the condom, rips the packet open and rolls it over him. Arthur ducks down again, mouths Eames’ side one last time, a bruising suck to salty skin, then rises onto his knees. Urges Eames’ leg up and pushes into him.

He doesn’t even try to keep silent, and what he hears is Eames’ drawn out groan. A single push, a single sound, until he’s seated deep and they stare at each other through sweat and haze, soundless except for their breathing. Eames’ thigh is a landscape of dark, curling strands of hair, and Arthur twists them between his fingers as he settles, watching Eames’ chest heave, watching the trickle of perspiration slip over his ribs until the trails of it shine.

He can’t bend that far, but he wants to tongue it off Eames’ skin, lick the sweat away in flat swipes and worry the flesh underneath until it’s bright red.

Eames’ body is a masterpiece of stillness, his abdomen rigid, his shoulders taut. And yet his hands move, slowly at first and then constantly tracking: up Arthur’s chest, rough across his nipples, avid over his arms. One of Eames’ palms slides around Arthur’s throat, fingers squeezing gently just under his jaw, then drifting down to press over the hollow where his pulse must be simply hammering.

Inside, Eames is so hot. Almost unbearable.

“Arthur, is this real?” Eames asks, and his _voice._ Shaky, doubtful, so brutally hopeful. Arthur meets his eyes and shudders at what he finds. Eames swallows, a tremulous click in his throat. His eyelids flicker.

“Do you, do you need…” Arthur reaches dazedly for Eames’ pants, and Eames shakes his head, _no, no, just_ —But Arthur finds the pocket with the chip anyway, presses the garment into Eames’ hand, imagining the ridges under the fabric. Eames’ fingers settle atop his. Arthur can hear the two of them breathing.

With Arthur kneeling over him, buried in him, Eames fumbles his totem out and turns it over between trembling fingers. His thumb trips over the ridges, a slide that somehow echoes right up the ridge of Arthur’s nape, and he groans, leans in and kisses Eames softly. Sees it out of the corner of his eye when Eames’ hand fists around the chip.

By the time he laces their fingers together, Eames’ totem is gone, lost among the sheets.

“Can never have you,” Eames mumbles against his mouth. “I try, and then I try to forget and none of it, Arthur, _none_ of it—” He loses it when Arthur cants his hips, shudders on the release. His breath skates across Arthur’s face and he grips Arthur at the base of his skull like he wants to hold him in place. But he doesn’t, just rides each thrust, mouth going slacker and slacker, and still the words come, somehow.

“Darling, you don’t know,” more air than speech, “you can’t _know,_ I’m,” buried in a kiss, “s’like breathing—” breaking into a torturous moan that stretches like the length of Eames’ body. Arthur runs his hands up his sides, over wiry hair and muscle and flesh, back to the tips of Eames’ fingers and weaves their hands together, squeezes until Eames’ winces and bucks up against him, then rolls up, deeper, as deep as he can go. Eames’s legs hitch even higher and he bears down. Arthur swears, reels on the edge, fights it back. He won’t let Eames get this out of him, not yet, not _yet,_ and then Eames smiles at him, sweat under his eyes and over his chin, and Arthur realizes he’s smiling back.

“Fuck, _fuck,_ Arthur,” Eames gusts, grips tighter, counters push for pull, jerks a hand free to haul Arthur down, his fingers splayed high and possessive over Arthur’s spine. He drags Arthur’s other arm to his mouth and tongues the inside of his wrist, ends in a helpless kiss right across that blue patch of veins. Bites into the heel of Arthur’s hand.

Arthur settles his weight back, attacks the crest of Eames’ collarbone, punches it out of Eames in sharp gasps that sear into his memory. God, this is going to hurt, he doesn’t even know what, just that he won’t come out of this unscathed. He’ll nurse these wounds for ages. Each thrust is a fierce clench, each kiss tart with salt. He’s going to come, and soon, violently. He wants Eames there in each jolt, every spike, wants _this_ smell of heat and sex and cologne and sunscreen branded into his nose forever. He tugs Eames even closer. It’s futile; they can’t get any nearer, he’s not even withdrawing anymore, just pressing in, locked tight and feeling every tremble inside Eames’ body, and god, what is he going to do after this is done, what’s he going to _be?_

He reaches down, wraps his hand around Eames with a sense of defeat, and Eames comes, a pained ripple, a hoarse cry, a stab in Arthur’s left hand where Eames fists his fingers, and—

And. Inside Eames’ body, where Arthur didn’t think the sensation could get any sharper, the heat flares, compacts, forces him into reckless motion, chasing it, it’s right there, right there—

He comes so hard his vision rocks.

“Stay,” Eames whispers. Barely a word, it’s so ragged. He drags his hands down Arthur’s body as if looking for a place to hold on to. “St—”

Arthur moans into Eames’ mouth and shudders through the spasms, and god, they go on forever. He can’t remember so intense a feeling, jagging through him like that spider web of lightning, just as hot, just as white. Eames tongues messily into his mouth, clacking their teeth together, as filthy a kiss as can be. Taking and taking. Arthur gives it all up. Gives it up and rides.

**

When he wakes, Eames is out of the bed.

“Morning, darling.”

He’s naked from the waist up, jeans slung low. No underwear that Arthur can see. The light—not morning at all, afternoon?—hangs over his shoulders as he turns from the window. His stubble ranges wildly across his jaw, his eyelashes are so long, and Arthur thinks, _It’s over, fuck. It’s._

Except that Eames comes back and drops down on hands and knees to lean over him. Arthur grips his nape and holds, so there’s no misunderstanding.

Eames tastes warm, a slither of mint.

“I am so glad you’re a kisser,” Eames sighs, languid over Arthur’s lips. He’s never sounded so content. 

But that word’s not right, ‘content.’ And Arthur’s not sure he’d know what happiness was, in Eames’ voice.

Arthur’s still naked. Eames crawls out of his jeans and onto him in the same indolent motion, plying Arthur’s mouth loose. Just one touch and Arthur’s already hard, jutting against Eames’ abdomen. Eames sinks down, pressing them mercilessly together, and Arthur bites his lip, struggling on the edge in a whitewashed haze.

Eames stills. Waits for Arthur to drift back, then hauls him upright into his lap and brings him off with their eyes locked.

**

He doesn’t know how many hours it’s been since he ate, but it’s the coldest hour of the night now, the moon high and bright through the window. The engines thrum as the ship chugs through the water, and Eames’ fingers trail back and forth over Arthur’s shoulder, almost a tickle. Arthur finds himself wishing for silence so that he can hear the sea.

“What do you think?” Eames murmurs. “Have we finally overshot ourselves?”

At first he thinks Eames means them. This. There’s a dull weight there beside the hunger, so recently the clean stretch of exertion. “Inception?”

Eames hums agreement.

“I honestly don’t know,” Arthur answers. It seems a long time ago, longer than the month it’s been. There are already details he’s having trouble remembering, things he’d thought would be branded in, given the magnitude of what they did. Instead, the memory is like a film he saw, actors he watched. A completely different plane.

For Arthur, the higher plateau, the perfect fruit hanging just out of reach, has long had nothing to do with the job. It’s a harrowing understanding to have, while lying in the arms of—

Their sweat is still sticky against his throat, between his legs.

 _He_ might have finally reached his pinnacle, here, in this bed. Arthur rolls that knowledge over his tongue. Savors the tang.

“Say we have,” he says, finally. He shifts enough to pull the sheets, not enough to dislodge anything about Eames. “Would you quit? Do something else?”

“I wonder if I know how to do anything else,” Eames replies after a moment. He doesn’t sound sad, just vaguely curious. 

The thing is, Arthur can’t imagine not doing what he’s been doing. It’s all a blank gray space ahead of him. No Somnacin, no infiltration, no shared dreaming? Most notably, no Eames. And that’s the grayest space of all, the one that makes him sick to look at.

God, he doesn’t even recognize himself anymore, and he’s alright with that.

**

Leaving the room, in the end, is not the death sentence Arthur feared. They get breakfast with the early risers, tucked under the windows in the dining room. They don’t say a word, just chewing and swallowing, the clink of stirring spoons, but it’s not awkward. Not when he’s seen Eames every which way, mapped the inches of his skin thrice over, heard Eames’ voice in a way that still bruises his heart, even now with just the echo remaining.

Arthur knows it’s the ship, knows that in a day’s time, they’ll be stepping back onto dry land and a certain gauze will vanish, fog melting under sunlight. Eames will be able to leave. _Arthur_ will be able to leave. And he’ll have to face what this is, if there still is a ‘this.’

His body hurts magnificently, sore in all the right places. He can see by the way Eames moves, settles back with coffee in hand, that he’s in the same boat, and his eyes keep flicking to Arthur, trailing him head to toe, unashamed.

Breakfast is brief. 

Arthur gets him back into their cabin without a thought to the rest that the cruise has to offer, and when Eames tugs him down onto the bed, gripping a little unsteadily, Arthur takes his time peeling the shirt and jeans back off of him. He studies every line of ink, kisses every shadow, wonders distractedly about the discrepancy between Eames’ shaking hands and steady eyes, and ends up forgetting as soon as Eames sighs his name into a kiss.

~fin~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from quote attributed to Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living."


	7. Tumble Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eames can't find his land legs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After THE CRUISE SHIP. 
> 
> Keeping it together is just another forge.

It has been four hours and thirty-seven minutes since he last had sex with Arthur. 

Eames looks at his watch. “Give or take.” 

He paces the length of the hotel room, lights a cigarette, and puffs it down to the nub within two minutes. Arthur’s room is right on the other side of that wall, and though he knows Arthur isn’t in said room at the moment—gone to sound out another point man about a recent ceasefire between two IT corporations—the weight of proximity clings to his skin.

Almost five hours, he hasn’t yet got his land legs back, and he can still feel Arthur in him whenever he moves.

He’s not sure what all he said on that cruise ship, but he’s certain it was damning. Good god, he has a hard enough time controlling his tongue around Arthur normally, did he expect having Arthur naked would make it easier? 

“You absolute fuck,” he chastises himself. Arthur was right, Eames will follow him anywhere and, once there, forget himself entirely in order to fold down into Arthur’s shadow. At least until Arthur shakes him loose again.

Well. He isn’t going to give Arthur a chance to shake him loose. Eames stubs out his second cigarette, tosses his clothing into his bag, and heads out. He steals a towel as he exits.

He gets all the way through security into the international terminal before he remembers that he really doesn’t like the idea of being shaken loose, by Arthur or by himself. Arthur, he’s never been able to command, but on the other end of the spectrum, what the hell is he doing?

“You had everything under control,” he says to the bathroom mirror in the airport, braced on both arms over the sink. “You had him completely in hand.” Pun intended, and yet it doesn’t make him feel better. In fact, he feels a bit ill.

Knowing he put himself so utterly at Arthur’s mercy after so many years is like rubbing his nerve endings in Listerine. He can’t get away from the burn. He’d honestly not known it would shove him to his knees like this.

The question becomes: Does Arthur know? If he does, that’s one hell of a playing card Eames has handed him. Eames certainly hadn’t kept any aces up his sleeve on the ship. As he heads to his gate and finds a seat, he realizes he can’t even remember wanting to, which, in his line of work, is a bad, bad thing. He’s got to start hoarding his cards, immediately, and he’s got to stop caring about what Arthur’s throwing into the pot.

The question then becomes: Can he do that? _Can_ he fuck around and then not mind if Arthur decides to cut him off? Eames’ prevailing impression of Arthur is not one of fickleness. The man is a planner, as evidenced by—Eames snorts—the fact that he couldn’t even admit to what he wanted without first making certain Eames had no chance of escape. Clearly not the healthiest basis to a relationship. 

But that wasn’t quite the beginning of their relationship.

Eames squirms in his seat. He’s been arse over teakettle for Arthur upwards of five years now. And that’s just since he realized it.

“Never should have let him fuck me,” he mutters.

“That’s a loaded statement,” someone says. Eames looks up to find a grinning girl with a knapsack on, three layers of sweaters, and a friend trying to yank her down the walkway. The friend is quite red in the face. Eames, to his horror, blushes to match, then glares silently at his giggling antagonist until she goes the fuck away.

Arthur would have found the whole encounter very funny. 

And then Eames is picturing that rare, dimpled smile, a splash of sun over Arthur’s face. He rubs his eyes. He doesn’t care what Arthur finds funny. He doesn’t care what scares Arthur, or soothes him, or cheers him up. In fact, the minute he lands in Jakarta, he’s going to find himself a dance club and sort himself out the old fashioned way.

**

He ends up at a bar with no one else in it, tucked back in the corner with a disgusting IPA he doesn’t remember the name of, and paranoia tickling up his nape.

Alright, so Eames may not be emotionally capable of bedding anyone else at the moment. But the point, as he sees it, is that Arthur does not need to _know_ that.

Arthur, unfairly adept point man with his fingers in every social media pot and a kinship with firearms that makes Viktor Bout look clumsy, doesn’t need to know that he has Eames cupped so securely in the palm of his hand, he could crush his heart in a flat second. Arthur doesn’t need to know that Eames aches with what they did.

“You,” Eames decides, getting to his feet and shooting his cuffs, “are a free spirit. Always have been, always will be. Arthur’s never changed that.”

He refrains from calling Arthur his lover even in his mind. A dangerous thing, falling for a criminal. Even more dangerous to do it slowly and unwittingly over half a decade.

He’s bucked other lovers before. He can buck this. This time he’ll have to wriggle out from under the emotional attachment as well, but he’ll figure that out. Most of what he knows, he learned by winging it the first time it smacked him broadside.

**

Three weeks later, he’s back in Arthur’s flat, on Arthur’s couch, coming utterly apart.

“Fuck’s sake,” he growls the next morning on his way into a cab. He’s still jet-lagged as hell and the sky hasn’t even begun to lighten.

**

In Miami, he goes out. Not to find someone to fuck; just to remind himself how such an outing feels. Incidentally, he does find someone to fuck, a thin man slightly older than him with a charming hint of gray at his temples and a smirk that promises a whole world of mischief. The man invites Eames back to his place within the first hour. Eames politely declines, and gets the next round as an apology. The next day, he does a rather nice forge in the brain of a crooked lawyer, steals the name of a mafia mole, and earns ten thousand dollars for his trouble. He uses part of it to fly to St. Lucia.

**

…and part of it returns him to San Francisco.

Arthur rises above him, exhaling as he cants his hips, settling back fully onto Eames. He trails his fingers down Eames’ chest. “Been getting some sun.”

“California boy,” Eames accuses breathlessly, gripping Arthur high on the thighs, thrusting up into him. “You like a good tan.”

Arthur’s snort is soft. He bends to meet Eames’ mouth.

Eames gives in and stays for four days. On the fifth day, Arthur tells him he has a job in Alberta that needs a forger. Eames comes along.

He makes a shit-ton of money, like he always does when Arthur vets the job, and he spends the week after drunk off of sex with his point man. _His_ point man, he thinks possessively. It’s much harder not to be overwhelmed by it than it is to just let things carry on. He figures, one knee locked in the crook of his elbow and his other hand clamped around the headboard, that he can always gather his wits later on, once Arthur’s finished scrambling his mind with the world’s least subtle rim job. If only the man would let him _come,_ Eames laments, dazed, lower lip chewed sore, and feeling utterly at peace with the universe.

Until they’re both finished, and Arthur crawls up to drop half atop him. Eames listens to him fall asleep, completely boneless, not in the least worried about what Eames might decide to do or steal or break during the night. Eames has a hard time swallowing around the pit lodged in his throat.

His point man.

He realizes he does not want Arthur with anyone else. The thought is a helpless, angry sort of itch he has no chance of scratching. If Arthur wants to be with someone, he’ll find a way to open that door. Arthur opens tricky doors for a living.

When it occurs to him that Arthur conned him onto a cruise ship in order to open _their_ door, Eames has a silent personal crisis there under Arthur’s snoozing body.

Then again. If Arthur wanted to be with Eames exclusively... well, he’d open that door, too. And he hasn’t done that. 

**

Eames takes off again. He drains a few yuppie trust funds for a woman in New York, and makes a nuisance of himself in bars, and wonders if Arthur has slept with anybody else. He takes jobs. His team members go out dancing, drinking, and pulling, but Eames stays in dingy hotel rooms, moodily makes his way through whatever booze is on hand, and constructs whole scenarios involving Arthur and any number of the fit young men they’ve worked with. He analyzes Arthur’s prospective type, using himself as a basis, and comes up with a disturbing array of possibilities, and backs out of a corporate heist at the last minute, and wallows at Yusuf’s, and flies to the country of Georgia, and gets in a fistfight with an architect who looked at Arthur sideways three months back, and realizes _he cannot shake this._

It’s been six months. In that time, he hasn’t slept with anyone but Arthur. “It’s my body,” he mutters, smoking furiously outside a crowded discotheque in Leipzig. “I’ll do what I bloody well want with it.” Right now, he wants to not be fucked. By anyone. He doesn’t want anyone up on him and he doesn’t want to be up on anyone, thank you very much, he’s just fine by himself.

Funny thing is, he’s not normally promiscuous anyway. He doesn’t take person after person home, and he doesn’t have trysts up against walls in seedy clubs. He’s had relationships before, but he doesn’t like the idea of exposing his back to just anyone, and that outlook doesn’t make for satisfying one night stands. 

It hurts how much he _wants_ Arthur, physically, like an addiction or a missing limb or... Eames doesn’t know. It isn’t even about sex; he just wants to touch him, to be with Arthur, and that’s how Eames knows he’s done for.

When he gets back into San Francisco, he’s jittery as fuck. He can barely light the cigarette he tries to smoke out front of Arthur’s Nob Hill apartment building. Looking up at the window, he has this feeling he’s going to knock on the door only to have someone else open it, the place cleaned out and refurnished, and Arthur gone to places unknown.

“Fuck.” He stubs out the cigarette and walks away.

**

He follows when Arthur leaves for Pretoria, and then gets a gun to the face when he bangs on Arthur’s hotel room door.

But.

“Eames,” Arthur says, and lowers his Beretta as easy as you please. He leaves the door open and goes back into the room. Eames gapes after him until Arthur sticks his head back around the corner. “Are you coming in or what?”

Eames slams the door shut behind him. “How do you even know I’m safe? What if there are hit men in the hallway?”

Arthur looks vaguely uncertain. “Are there hit men in the hallway?”

“Fuck, no. What do you take me for?”

Arthur shrugs and nods, but Eames’ point is, he didn’t even check. Eames isn’t supposed to be on this job, isn’t supposed to know anything about it, because that’s how Foster runs her extractions, and yet here he is, and Arthur acts like he popped down to the corner shop for a packet of crisps.

“Did you eat yet?" Arthur gestures to the mini-fridge. It’s an old thing grumbling away in the corner. “I have some leftovers if you want them.”

“Not hungry.” He doesn’t remember the last time he ate a decent meal. Probably at Arthur’s apartment, because Arthur cooks, and Eames, when at Arthur’s place, apparently cooks too. God, he’s cooked with Arthur. He’s shot Arthur, fucked Arthur, been shot and fucked by Arthur. He’s saved Arthur’s life, snogged him silly, traveled half the world in one night to get to him, and professed his love on a boat in the middle of the fucking ocean. The only thing he hasn’t done is marry the bastard.

“Shit, I am worn out.” Arthur shuffles over to turn off the TV. For the first time, Eames realizes he’s got a housecoat on, one of those ratty terry cloth horrors that mold themselves to their owner and forever hold the scent of cologne and shampoo. It’s faded plum and it has holes in the collar, and Eames has seen it hanging in Arthur’s closet in SF. “Shouldn’t dreaming all the time make you more awake, not less?”

Eames paces, unable to keep still. “You weren’t sleeping, you were setting up _for_ sleeping,” he gripes. “Go to bed if that’s what you want.” 

Arthur, perched on the edge of the bed now, looks at him with a twist to his mouth. “What’s with you?”

He likely means it specifically. Eames takes it universally. “I don’t know, Arthur,” he answers, sarcastic and brittle. “What’s ever with me? It’s always something, always someone else’s issue. How do you even know it’s me acting strange? Might be a different person entirely.”

Arthur abandons the bed and comes closer. When he speaks, his tone is low and urgent. “What happened in Gibraltar?”

Hell. _Of course_ Arthur knows where he’s been. If Eames didn’t know better, he’d think Arthur was keeping track of him. “Nothing happened.”

“You sure?” Arthur reaches out but doesn’t quite touch. “You have your totem?”

“Oh, for god’s sake.” Eames takes his totem out, the chip he’s flipped and palmed and fondled steadily for the past three hours, and flings it across the room. “No, I don’t have my totem. Maybe everything will make sense now.”

Arthur stares after the coin. His eyes flick to Eames, but his head doesn’t move. It makes Eames feel like a wild animal in a zoo. “Stop looking at me like that.”

Arthur raises both hands. “Didn’t mean to.” But he doesn’t look away, and it makes Eames furious.

“What is it you want out of this?” he finally snaps, unable to keep the big questions in.

Arthur frowns. “What is it I want? You’re the one who followed me to—”

“I _know._ That’s exactly my point!”

Arthur should not look so damned enticing when he’s confused. But it’s genuine confusion, and that just hikes Eames’ frustration higher. “You have to give me a little more than that.”

“Oh, I have to, do I?”

“I don’t know why you’re here,” Arthur explodes. It comes out of nowhere, and immediately he shuts down again. Puts on the suit. “If you need help, it’s fine. It’s fine. Just tell me what happened so I can do something about it.”

“No, you’ve been doing things about it, haven’t you?” Eames isn’t even sure if it’s him or a forge speaking anymore, just that words keep coming out of his mouth and they’re not making much sense. “This isn’t what I signed up for.”

And Arthur… well, Eames could be misinterpreting this but—no, Arthur _blanches._ Goes white, freckles standing out. He covers it quickly, a tug to his robe and a hand through his hair, delightfully curly, until the cruise ship Eames had no idea that Arthur kept it so under wraps, and he loves it, loves to get his fingers through it. 

“Fine,” Arthur exhales quietly. “Fine.”

It’s funny how many times Arthur keeps saying that word, ‘fine,’ when it’s clearly not fine. Eames is not fine. Eames is a step from panicking, not sure why, just that he’s misunderstood something, doesn’t speak _Arthur_ as fluently as he prides himself he does. “It’s not fine,” he argues. Arthur looks at him, and there’s anger there, banked but not hidden.

“Is there anyone else?” Eames demands, immediately appalled at himself, but hell, it’s not his hotel room. He can leave in a flat second. 

He’s confused Arthur again, but that’s better than having Arthur angry with him. Still, Arthur responds carefully. “How do you mean?”

“Fuck it. Not going to spell it out.” He could kick something. He’s not made to outline his life like this, not to someone for whom he feels so much when he can’t figure out if it’s reciprocated. There’s no way to have this conversation without one of them making a fool of himself. “I’m out.”

He turns for the door, then spins around again because if it’s the last time, he’s damn well going to take a keepsake. And it won’t compare to shuddering to completion with Arthur’s breath over his mouth, to that heat or that intimacy or the fathomless look in Arthur’s eyes, but he can’t care. Something is pleading within him, and he jerks a hand through his hair, and yanks Arthur in by his robe, and kisses him on the mouth. 

It’s soft, unexpectedly. It’s meant to be goodbye, but Eames finds he can’t leave. All he can do is gentle that mouth he adores so much, nibble those lips he dreams about, beg them to open one more time.

They do.

Arthur comes away from it whole minutes later, sucking in a breath that is half sound. He presses back in, but just to touch, to glance his mouth over Eames’. Eames chases it, drugged, all thoughts of leaving fully fled, and wonders again how he got here. As if he hears the uncertainty, Arthur closes both hands in the back of Eames’ jacket and grips hard.

His arms are around Eames. And he is fully in Eames’ embrace, how did they get there?

“I want this," Arthur breathes, the words a rush. His grip tightens even more, pressing into Eames’ ribs. “God, I want, I thought I made it clear.”

He sounds broken. Desperate. Even that horrible day when Eames found him tied bleeding to a chair, Arthur hadn’t sounded this close to the edge. His hand thumps dully against Eames’ spine, still fisted in Eames’ coat, and he bites out, “I want you to stop doing that and then _leaving.”_

Eames’ heart smarts, a magnificent, full feeling. He lifts Arthur up, still kissing him, and backs him to the bed.

**

The next time Arthur opens his door, Eames puts his clothing in a drawer and his wallet in the bedside table, and stays.

~fin~


	8. Sharp Edges

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He gets three feet down the hall to the door of the sitting room, before the stillness really hits him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one riffs directly off of _Such Displays_ and probably won't make the most sense without that one as an appetizer.

“Sure you don’t want to go?”

Eames snuffles and wiggles his nose preposterously— 

_(“Just use the damn tissues already, Eames.”_

_“I would, but then I’d have to wash my hands, darling. You may think it’s funny, but it’s sn—”_

_“Finish that sentence. I dare you.”)_

—then smiles at Arthur. “I’m all stuffed up. I’d only spoil it for you, darling.” They get a few steps, and Eames looks at him again. “But don’t let that keep you from going. I know how you’ve been waiting for this.”

Arthur _has_ been looking forward to this film. Limited showing, only for the one night at the restored art theater down the street. “So you’re just going to be home alone. Sick.”

Eames rolls his eyes. “I am a grown man. I have weathered many a flu all by my lonesome.”

Arthur nods. “Fair enough.” He squints at the rain, just beginning to mist to street level. “You know what would make my movie experience better, though? Jaffa Cakes.”

Eames groans, smacking a hand to his forehead and sliding it down his face. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been sorrier for a thing in my life as I am for introducing you to those disgusting abominations.”

“Delicious abominations, Eames. Delicious.”

Eames turns and walks backwards, taking Arthur by the shoulders. “No, Arthur, they are devouring your _life._ I have tried an intervention and I cannot stand by any longer. I refuse to be party to this.”

“Fine.” Arthur chafes his hands together and shoves them back into his pockets.

“Alright.” Eames nods.

“So I’ll just go in there.” Arthur nods at the corner shop, lit a cheery yellow. “By myself.”

“You do that.” Eames strikes off down the street.

“I’m going to buy two packs.”

“Two more than you should ever associate with.”

“Home after the film.”

“Whenever.”

“Will you make me tea when I get back?” Arthur calls, the one walking backward this time. “On the off chance I have leftover abominations?” 

“I’ll do no such thing.”

Arthur grins and jogs the rest of the way to the kerb.

Just outside the door, he kicks mud from his boots, pats his jacket down for his cell, and checks the time. Five minutes before previews. Plenty of time. He waits for a couple standing in the entrance to finish pulling on their overcoats and locating their umbrellas. They push past him into the night with apologies, and by that time, Eames has turned the corner. 

Arthur gets his Jaffa Cakes and eats one standing in line for the register, licking chocolate from the thumb of one hand while he fishes change from his pocket with the other. Then it’s back into the wet, searching idly for the distinctive tread of Eames’ boots on the sidewalk. He turns for the cinema, gets all the way to the ticket kiosk, and pauses. The drizzle ices across the back of his neck, and the pavement glows neon under the marquee. Arthur sucks chilly hair in through his nose and blows it back out.

He looks up at the marquee, then back down the street. Juggles his phone from hand to hand.

“Nah.” He turns back around, jogs across the street, and sets off for home.

 _Changed my mind,_ he texts, smiling to himself. _Home in 2._

Their street is quiet, full of lit stoops and curtains drawn to keep in the warmth. _Our street,_ Arthur thinks. Just one flat in dozens, but it’s Eames’ lair. Now it’s Arthur’s, too. He could get used to this: whole chunks of the year in England, then back to the West Coast. Anywhere else they’ve a mind to go, but there’s something very satisfying about having a home base here.

Arthur loves London in the winter. Call him insane; Eames certainly has.

He takes the stairs, his muscles jittery from the cold, and unlocks the door to the mud room and a dim hallway. He slings his raincoat over the usual hook and unzips the jumper beneath. “Too cold,” he decides, and leaves it on despite the vague damp of the sleeves. The sound of the kettle hisses from the kitchen; about halfway to boiling. Arthur smiles and pops another cake into his mouth.

He gets three feet down the hall to the door of the sitting room, before the stillness really hits him. In spite of the kettle hissing, the atmosphere is tight, off. The lamp is on by the window, but something—

Arthur’s gun is already in hand when his left shoulder flashes white hot, then immediately goes numb. He hears the shot then, and hits the ground behind the couch, barrel pointed ceilingward. All he can hear are his own breaths and the tea kettle’s hushed but building roar. The clock in the kitchen, ticking.

In his mind is that last tableau: his husband, lying face up on the living room floor.

“Eames.” It breaks from him, unstoppable. There’s no response, not from Eames and not from the intruder.

The numbness is fast becoming a fierce and swollen fire. Arthur yanks his jumper out of the way and presses his palm to the warmth soaking his shirt.

He chances a look out.

On the floor, the blood under Eames’ head glints, reddening his hair. His face is turned away. Can’t tell if he’s breathing. Arthur leans too far: the next shot nearly takes his ear off. He spins back, flattens against the back of the sofa. His shoulder has become a damp mess under his hand, and he can now feel the furrow in the skin. As agonizing as it feels, it’s not bad. Bleeding freely, but relatively shallow.

“Ah,” says a voice. “The ball and chain.”

Arthur pops the clip out of his weapon with slippery fingers, checks the cartridge, and snaps it back in. He takes two measured breaths, then spins, levels, gets off a shot. The man—it _is_ a man—scrabbles clear, backing behind the larger of the bookcases.

But Arthur’s had a look at him. He retreats behind the couch, teeth cutting into his lower lip. 

He remembers so clearly: twirling a steak knife, Eames’ arm firm around his waist, perpetually half out of his seat for so long his thigh muscles ached with tension. He remembers soothing piano music, Eames’ measured strain, the arc of his raised eyebrow. His incredulous amusement at an asshole who just didn’t know when to quit. Arthur remembers a thought he dismissed: wanting to cut that man right across his pale throat. 

“I’d hoped to avoid you.” The invader’s tone is strident, almost good-humored. “You’re going to ruin my record.”

No sign of a British accent, how the hell did this get past Eames? How did it get past _him?_ Arthur’s shoulder seethes, a fresh blitz of pain. He shoves his hair out of his eyes.

“Shouldn’t have stuck around, then,” he parries, and wipes his palm on his sleeve. Thinks about tying off his shoulder. It’s not time he’s willing to spare.

“Starting to agree with you.” Arthur hears the click of a clip and wonders how many firearms the man has. Wonders if the man’s voice is naturally raspy, or if he hit the guy. “Still, I think it’s salvageable.”

Arthur lowers onto his side, keeping his head in the same place long enough to speak. “Something else you have to do?”

“Get him out the door.”

“What are they offering?” Arthur slithers to the other side of the couch as soon as the question is finished, and inches around the end of it. He pulls up into a crouch, keeping his head low. 

“One hundred thousand dead. Twice that if he’s alive.” The man sniffs. From where Arthur is now, he can see up to Eames’ waist. Eames still hasn’t moved. 

“I intend to get the best price I can for him,” the man goes on. “You, I’m not picky about.”

Death sentence, then. A shot to Arthur’s head and two to the chest at the very least. If this guy is well enough trained to track them here without pinging either of their radars, then he’s good enough to get the last laugh. Arthur’ll be cold long before Eames gets wherever he’s headed, and not one of his husband’s captors will think twice about it.

He’s leaving bloody streaks on their carpet. Stupid thing to think about. Arthur wrestles a shoe off. His right hand, his good hand, is starting to numb as well. It’s an effort to move his fingers. Blood loss. As soon as the shoe is free, he gets to work on his tie, leaving it barely knotted around his neck. Then he crawls back on elbows and knees, stretching flat to get his head back where he originally was. Better if this bastard doesn’t know he’s moved. “Watching us for a while.”

“Oh, I’ve heard things about you.”

Clearly the man knows Eames isn’t an easy fish to net either. “You should have killed me, then.”

“Yes. I should have.” The man’s voice sounds strained; Arthur thinks he did hit him, and wonders if his voice has given his own wound away.

He can’t even hear a hint of breathing from Eames. It’s making his heart race.

He shimmies back to his shoe in silence, picks it up, and flings it at the place where he last heard the voice. The man grunts and Arthur lunges out, halfway across the room before he’s even upright. The gun flashes up, but Arthur smacks it aside with his forearm and slams the man full-bodied into the wall. The weapon goes off. Arthur swings the butt of his gun against the man’s temple and is deflected. A spark of silver catches to the right: Arthur shoots an arm out, smacks the gun aside again. He gets an elbow into the man’s throat and punches inward, but his shoulder flares and the blow slides. A leg curls around Arthur’s knee, trying to bring him down, nearly succeeding. He wraps his good arm around the man’s waist and twists, slamming him into the corner of the bookshelf on their way to the floor. Arthur’s head swims, but the man’s movements are even more sluggish. Arthur gets to his knees, finds the cold, hard grip of someone’s gun, and jams the barrel under the man’s chin.

His attacker freezes. The gun’s a Desert Eagle, not one Arthur favors but familiar enough. He gives the trigger a tap.

Looks over at Eames and very nearly squeezes it.

He changes up instead, pulls back and pistol whips the man in the temple. Then he pushes up on one knee and rolls the dazed assassin, yanks him into place beneath him and uses his tie to cinch the man’s hands to his ankles. There’s more blood, a wound in the intruder’s side, it looks like, but Arthur doesn’t wait. He leans close, pulling the knots tighter. 

“You’d better hope he’s alive,” he manages into the man’s ear, “or you’ll die so slow.” 

He gives the knot one last jerk, then shoves off and scrambles over to Eames. The room tilts, his left arm won’t hold his weight, but he gets there at last, hands trembling against Eames’ side, cradling Eames’ head as he turns his face up. Eames got out of his coat, but that’s all: one of his shirt cuffs is still buttoned, his tie only just loosened from its knot. There’s a long cut just under Eames’ hairline, leaching blood down the side of his face. His hair is a damp, warm muddle. Arthur puts his fingers to his husband’s throat and then has to shut his eyes and take a deep breath, calm himself down enough to feel anything.

Steady flutter.

Arthur curls over Eames, his bad hand clenched and unfeeling in the carpet. He stays for a moment, breathing hard through his nose against Eames’ forehead. His heart, at last given the space, slams in his chest.

The assassin twitches. Arthur tenses, ready to pounce, but the man slumps fully into the carpet and goes still.

“Eames?” Arthur runs his hands over his husband’s face, pressing one to the cut to staunch the blood. The kettle is shrieking now, tinny and distorted by the pounding in Arthur’s ears. “Come on. Come on, Eames.”

Eames’ brow contorts, a disgruntled child waking from sleep. His mouth opens and he lets out a soft moan.

“It’s okay,” Arthur whispers, planting a kiss between his brows, another on his cheek. “It’s alright. Can you hear me?”

Nothing but an incoherent whisper. Eames’ eyes flutter open, but there is no focus in them and they slip shut again. Arthur fumbles for his phone, relieved beyond words to find it still in his pocket. His fingers shake as he dials.

**

They stitch up his shoulder, and then he sits in the chair at Eames’ bedside, still in his bloody shirt and trousers. The police ask for a statement. He gives them half of the truth. Enough to settle blame. 

He listens to a doctor tell him Eames may have bleeding in the brain. He nods in all the right places. He lets them take Eames for scans. He doesn’t speak. 

When Eames is back and the officers and nurses have gone, he takes out his gun and turns it over and over in his hands. 

Before long, he takes Eames’ hand instead. It’s warm, but his fingers are limp. The wedding band is smudged by blood. Arthur rubs it until it gleams. The plan is to kiss Eames’ fingers one by one. Arthur gets to his thumb, his pointer, before he pushes his face to Eames’ palm and shakes. Can’t stop pressing his mouth to Eames’ skin. 

“Baby, don’t do this.” He _never_ calls Eames pet names. Never. “Don’t do this to me, I need you here. Please, please, please, please, please. Please wake up. Wake up. Please, god, please, wake up.” 

After a while, he doesn’t even know what he’s saying.

**

When it all fades—

When he can’t stand it anymore, when the fury drowns him like a tide, when Eames _still doesn’t move, speak, sigh—_

—Arthur gets up and walks down the hall to lean in the doorway of the farthest room. He’s careful to remain out of sight. The man is handcuffed to the bed. The side of his face is black and blue where Arthur hit him and his left eye is swollen. A police officer sits guard between the bed and the door.

There’s a ringing in Arthur’s ears.

Shooting him would be so easy. Even better, smothering him in his sleep. Quick, quiet, permanent. Some part of Arthur is appalled, railing with small fists against the windows, but the larger part can’t stop screaming, can’t stop knowing, can’t ignore that endless stretch when he didn’t know if Eames was alive or dead. 

He still doesn’t know if Eames will wake up. Doesn’t know what might be different when he does.

There’s a bounty on Eames, a mantle others will take up. Maybe they already have. This can’t be quick or quiet, but it does need to be permanent. It needs to stab the repulsion in so deep that even the thought of coming after Eames sickens.

“No,” he whispers, to nobody. To everybody.

He backs slowly into the dim stairwell and gets out his phone. “Yusuf.”

_“Arthur?”_

“Do you still have the compound we used on Fischer?”

A pause. _“I can make some. I’ll need a day.”_

Arthur stares through the little square window. He can just see the man lying on the hospital bed in his room. “Overnight it to me.” He gives Yusuf the post box number he uses for job intel. “I’ll wire you whatever it costs.”

_“Arthur, is everything alright?”_

“It will be.” He thanks Yusuf and hangs up.

**

When the package arrives, he goes home, then makes one other call. Saito listens, then sends bodyguards to Eames’ hospital room. He asks if Arthur needs a watcher.

“Won’t be necessary,” Arthur says, fingering the end of one of the PASIV’s cannulas. “But thank you.”

“Then please inform me when you are finished. So that I know.” 

Arthur promises to do so. The line clicks off.

** 

He brings the guard a coffee, then takes the PASIV into the assassin’s room when the sedative takes effect. Shuts the door, turns off the lights, and hooks the PASIV straight into the guy’s IV port. Then he sticks himself, settles back, breathes until he—

Bright street, small town. It takes him forty seconds to find the guy. Arthur punches him in the face and drags him into an alley, then hooks him up to the second PASIV. Sits and breathes, and—

Sunflowers. An arboretum he visited with Eames. The man grabs Arthur by the arm, eyes wide, mouth open, “What are you—” but Arthur hits him. Again. Again, until he bleeds. He pulls out the next cannula and the guy struggles, throws all his weight against Arthur’s grip, but it’s nothing, not in Arthur’s dream. Not today.

Down.

Cold. Cold and blue forever, shadows and ice and yawing buildings and black windows. Arthur drops the guy to his knees in the street. The man sags against dark gray pavement. Up high, the wind whistles and howls, endless.

“Wait,” the man gasps. His nose is broken. He holds out one hand, whether to stop Arthur from moving for the PASIV or to plead for mercy, Arthur doesn’t know. “Wait, I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry.” Arthur shakes his head. He unspools the tubing, kneels, and finds a vein in the man’s trembling arm. He hooks himself up next. “How sorry?”

“I’ll never touch you again, either of you!”

Arthur seizes his chin, forcing their eyes to meet. “You’re right. You won’t.”

He presses the button.

Bright, hot light from above, pooling on the floor. Beyond, black as tar. The only sound: a steady drip, drip, drip. The man clutches at Arthur’s pant leg as he stands. “Please,” he mumbles, slurring the word, “please…”

“This is _my_ house,” Arthur says to the top of his head, blasted gold by the spotlight. “Enjoy my forever.”

He shoots himself in the skull to the sound of the man’s screams.

Cold, blue. Again.

Humid, yellow. Again.

Alley. Again.

He comes to two minutes after he left, packs up the PASIV, and walks out.

**

“ ‘thur…?”

He sucks in a breath, pushes the laptop aside, and leans in, his hand finding Eames’ on the blanket. “Eames?”

“Where am I?” Eames slurs. His accent is thick and muddled and beautiful.

“Got clubbed,” Arthur murmurs. He strokes hair away from Eames’ eyes and threads their fingers together. His heart is a rabbit’s in his chest. “At home. Someone broke in.”

Eames shuts his eyes. His forehead creases. “Hit out on me?”

“Not anymore.” Word’s already out, Arthur made sure of that. The hit order gasped its last breath two hours ago, but the far louder knell is still reverberating through the underground. People begging for intel, for news. _Someone took the hit? Shit, Arthur must have killed the guy._

_Right? ___

__Eames lets out a weak laugh. “What’d you do?”_ _

__Arthur shrugs. “Took care of it.” He kisses Eames’s fingers, one by one, and he knows Eames can tell he’s shaking. But Eames doesn’t say a word._ _

__~fin~_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I think we all wanted to kick some ass tonight.


End file.
